


The Curious Case of Ana Vincent

by hejvb



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Death, Comfort Sex, Death, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Johnlock Fluff, Kidnapping, Love, Love Confessions, Masturbation, Morning After, Multi, Mystery, Pregnancy, Rape, Rape Recovery, Season/Series 03, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Slave Trade, Suspense, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-21 06:50:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hejvb/pseuds/hejvb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Magnussun has driven Ana's family to financial and mental ruin, she attempts to kill him but ultimately fails to carry out the deed and is punished severely for it. Before her punishment is complete, she is pulled out of her ruined world and thrown in to a bonfire with John Watson by an unknown stranger, only to be rescued by detective for hire; Sherlock Holmes. Unbeknownst to both Sherlock and Ana, Magnussun is not the only one playing games with Ana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock Holmes

She sat, back perching forward in the tall tree, her hands firmly wrapped around the rear grip of her Barrett M82 with her right eye against the scope of the rifle. A man descended the steps of the lavish looking, modernist home, looking around with a glass of wine in his hand. Her fingers tightened around the trigger, while her mind raced infinitely debating whether this was the right or wrong thing to do.

Her breathing grew strained and heavy, as sweat trickled down her head. She had lost track of time while internally fighting a battle with her consciousness. It was too late, which she was inarguably losing. Her fingers loosened around the rifle and she stopped. Her long, dark brown hair fell in front of her face on top of the rifle and she scrambled to tuck it back behind her ear, all the while keeping her eye on the scope as she watched the man turn and start towards the steps on his porch and walked forwards. She still had a chance. She could shoot him in the back of his head right here and now. She closed her eyes and disregarded her consciousness questioning her behind the morality of what she was about to do, and placed her fingers back on the trigger, and her unnatural grey eyes squinting back in to the scope. The man was gone. She panicked and started looking around the exterior of the estate with the scope of the firearm, unable to see her target.

Her heart stopped. From the corner of her eyes, she saw a small red light at the bottom of the tree, making it's way to her. It was the red target light from another sniper. She looked around frantically, trying to find her rope in her duffel bag. She knew it was foolish to try to run away now, but she could not die this way. She refused to die at the hands of the likes of him and his men. Her hands found the rope, but failed to stop shaking due to her panicking, and they fell to the ground with a loud thud as she looked down in horror. It was then that she noticed the red dot on her navy blue tank top, dead centre of her chest. Another red light appeared right next to the first, followed by another, and then another. One pointed to her head, two on her chest, one on her stomach, and the final one above her pelvic bone, trailing lower playfully to her groin region. She closed her eyes in disgust and defeat, and one tear trailed down her flushed, left cheek.

"You've been a very, very bad girl, Ana."

She refused to open her eyes to look at the man, knowing exactly who it was. She let go of the rifle and stood up on the thick branch of the tree. Eyes still closed, she spoke. "What are you waiting for? Why prolong my suffering?"

"Open your eyes, Ana."

She didn't.

"I'm not going to kill you. But if you don't open your eyes immediately as I have instructed, I'll have my men shoot them first, one after the other, considering you don't wish to utilize them when the opportunity arises, and then you'll never see what you hold most dear in the world ever again. And you won't have anyone to blame but yourself."

She bit her lips, and opened her eyes. The man she sat looking through the scope of a Barrett M82 for two days stood at the bottom of the tree, looking up at her, along with 4 heavily armed militant looking men who held rifles pointed at her. The fifth rifle was held by the man in the spectacles.

"Now be a good girl and get down. You've caused me a lot of inconvenience for the past two days, having to pretend I didn't know you were there and for that, I need to punish you."

\--

Her eyes opened to an infinite darkness as they tried to adjust to it's settings. There was happy, celebrating yelling all around her, and she could not make out from whence it was coming due to the darkness. Was she underground? She lay on a cold, brick surface with her left cheek pressed against it. There was smoke forming slowly but surely all around her. She was unable to move her mouth to speak, nor move her legs or arms. She looked down to make out why that was so, but saw no type of restrains around her arms that were on the ground in front of her, nor around her ankles. She tried to scream as the smoke started to get more frequent and the darkness around her started to fade as a bright light engulfed all around her. Fire.

_Please! Someone help me! Please get me out of here! I beg you, please, I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die._

No words escaped her mouth, not even a sound. Tears rolled down her expressionless face

She started to feel a tingle in her back, something pushing against her up and down in a very hasty and scared manner. A…hand? It was then that she realized there was someone else placed next to her, that he was most likely placed back to back with her. She could not turn her head to see who it was, nor was that her concern at the moment, for the light started to get brighter and the smoke and heat started to make their way in to her nostrils, mouth and eventually her entire body. She could not even cough due to whatever it was that was stopping her from moving.

Her vision began to blur and then the light started to fade, as she felt drops of something wet trickle down her face, increasing in quantity second by second. The liquid made it's way down her face, and in to her mouth down her throat. Water! It was water! The darkness around her began to fade as the material she was under was lifted from on top of her by a cloaked figure, who clawed at her surroundings desperately. It was then she could make out that she was engulfed by a fortress of wood, and she was now able to move her head a few inches to look to her left. She saw a blonde haired man, passed out behind her and she felt her own head getting lighter due to the ember she had inhaled. Just as fast as she had moved her head, she felt it fall back to the ground and her eyes shut tight as the cloaked figure grabbed the both of them and pulled them by the waist both, out of the wooden grave.

The distinct smell of a hospital creeped in to her nose as her eyes flung open and her senses returned. She looked down to her feet first thing, and watched as she wriggled her toes, then to her right arm as she stared at the second degree burn marks that painted her sleeves and wrists. That arm was placed on top of her left arm, thus - she deduced - would have been caused more damage upon than the right due to the heat. She lifted her left arm and stared at the next to little damage done on it. With it, she lifted the sheets placed carefully on top of her and stood, walking over to the floor mirror next to the bed. She stood in front of it to inspect her body. Removing the hospital gown, she stared at herself, standing confidently nude in front of the mirror. Well, almost nude. She wore coral underwear with black florals. She inspected the wounds. It could have been worse, she supposed. There were some light burn marks scattered on her legs and stomach, but nothing that would leave a scar in the future. Something she could not say the same about regarding her back.

The door flung open behind her, as she stared at the mirror still. A man who had his right fist placed on his chin in a thoughtful manner walked in, wearing a black coat with a purple scarf. He was unaware of her nudity and locked the door behind him as he entered. He lifted his eyes up from the ground to be greeted by her bare back and his expression quickly became blank as he set his eyes on the portrait in front of him. He was entranced by it, in fact. She did not turn, simply looked at him from the mirror, aware of her own state and of his.

"Hello." He was the first to speak.

"Hello." She said back, with a hint of an American accent underlining a poor British one.

She brought her arms forward and covered her breasts, still staring at the mirror, before turning to face him. He kept his eyes glued on her back in the mirror, as she walked forwards towards him. She was now only a few inches from his face, however he continued to look at the mirror rather than her. Whether it was out of curiosity or disgust, she was unsure. She pressed forward on his chest, her hands causing a barrier between his lower chest and her breasts.

"Do you want to touch them?"

She stood almost a foot shorter than he was, and had to look up at him. His eyes now fixed on her shoulders. She could tell he was uncomfortable retaining eye contact with her. Most people usually are due to her eye colours. He nodded. On cue, she turned her back to him. His index finger of his right hand went over the multitude of scars on her back. She closed her eyes and felt his fingers trace the whip and burn marks; each one twice.

"How?" He asked, one eyebrow raised. She noticed his eyebrows were much lighter than his shaggy, curly dark brown hair. Her hair was only a shade darker than his.

"You haven't even bought me a drink and you're asking such personal questions already? You are a confident one, aren't you?"

He smirked. "I'm not the one standing practically nude in front of someone they've just met."

"Technically, we met last night," she turned, "...thank you for saving my life. I'm in your debt."

She walked to the edge of the hospital bed, and bent over in front of him to gather the gown she had thrown on it earlier. Whether this was to tease or completely unintentional, he was unsure. "It's the infinite drugs in my system," she spoke. "I don't know what they've put inside my body. My apologies." He continued to look on to her tan back, still curious, not acknowledging the fact that her bare, pink buttocks were right in front of him. She stood back up with the gown in her hand and slid in to it as if it was an every day occurrence. Her eyes closed, she heard a rustle and looked to see him sit on the couch in front of the bed. She sat on the bed, legs crossed and the gown carefully placed over her knees so not to have him see her privates.

"There were several in your system prior to being admitted to the hospital. Why were you drugged and placed strategically in the bonfire along with John?" He spoke quickly, looking at her with his hands placed on his chin.

It took her a moment to register who John could be, until she remembered she was next to a man in her "wooden grave."

"I can't recall the events leading up to the bonfire, but -"

"Who did it? Who are you?"

"If you'd have let me finished, I'd tell you," she didn't want to tell him as that would only lead to further questions about her past, ones which she was not comfortable providing answers to momentarily. Regardless, she continued to the best of her abilities, making sure not to give too much about herself away. "If I'm correct, it was a friend of a man called Charles Augustus Magnussen. I do not remember the events that led to my being put in the bonfire as I'm sure I was drugged, but I do not have a good history with the man thus his reasons would be justified. As for who I am, it does not concern you."

She shifted positions in the bed, her burned arm getting tired of being in the position it was in, so she got off and started pacing around the window, holding her burned arm with the other. She was pressing down on it to cease the desire to itch the burns as they were uncomfortably tingling her. The man got off of the couch and exited the room only to come back in within the mere span of two minutes, holding a tub of a vaseline-like substance. He walked over to her and grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to face him.

"Stretch out your arm." He ordered, looking at her eyes and not removing his gaze until she was willing to comply. She did.

"It's an Aloe vera and salt solution for burn marks such as yours. It should relieve your need to itch and scratch. My own concoction, before you ask. You involuntarily saved a very dear friend of mine from acquiring the likes of the burn marks which you now have simply by being placed in front of him," Placing the jar on the window sill, he removed his scarf and coat first and undid his cuff links, lifting the sleeves of his lavender shirt up with his left hand. He picked up the jar with the same hand and dipped his right hand in to the jar. He continued, "…whether this was intentional or not by whoever placed you both there, I do not care. I am simply…thankful."

She felt his fingers run along the burns carefully as they both looked down on her arm. The concoction immediately soothed the burns and her shoulder sank lower in satisfaction as she let out an involuntary moan. He smiled to himself when he thought she was not looking, continuing to apply it all over her arm. Her eyes remained closed through out his application of the gel, allowing him the chance to mentally scrutinize her as he would anyone else while she did not notice. Alas, nothing. He could not deduce anything about the women that was not already obvious. He was so totally and completely entranced by her scars, still, that he only wanted to know more about them and her. Her eyes flung open. She looked at him first and then back down her arm which he held in his as he applied the gel, very carefully and elegantly. Finally, he took in how odd but interesting her features were. She was a frail looking woman with near jet black hair. The scars all over her body and her vanity contradicted that fragility. She had seen battle, if you'd call it that, however she was not of the military. Her posture was too laid back and her tone was neither assertive nor obedient enough to be a military woman. There was a hint of fear in her tone when she apologized. 

He stopped the circular motions he was making on her arm, after having decided he had lathered her everywhere the gel was required and then some. She did not remove her arm from his, aware of this fact, and he simply held on to her hand.

"My name is Ana. Ana Vincent." Finally, she slid her arm down his to find his hand, and shook it softly.

"Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes." He said proudly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the timeline of the events will follow the events of season three of BBC's Sherlock, there will be some things that are going to be very different. If you do not like the fact that I will have changed some characters or events, please do not read further. You are warned. If you do or do not mind, let me know by commenting and what you think of it. Thanks! Enjoy.


	2. The Client

Exiting her room, he stood a few feet away from her door, shuffling through his coat pocket looking for his phone. A red haired female nurse strolled by him, looking at him interestedly. He smiled, awkwardly, not knowing what else to do but that. The woman winked at him as she carried on walking, however continuing to look at him. Disregarding her as if the encounter did not take place, he pulled out a sleek matte black iPhone 5, dialling as quickly as the cold winter winds would allow him. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the nurse's face drop from embarrassment, as she stood waiting for him to look back at her. He had no interest in such endeavours and refused to do so. It was so...human. When it was evident he would not give her the attention she sought, she angrily turned and looked around to see whether someone had witnessed the act or not. Thankfully, it was the latter and she carried on, placing her arms around her body to shelter herself from the cold. The hallways of St. Bartholomew's Hospital were dreadfully, and rather exceptionally, cold on that day due to the heating being replaced and fixed.

He put the phone to his ear, a shiver running down his spine due to the sudden coldness of the metal meeting with his skin.

"Dear brother, to what do I owe the displeasure of a call from you? Is it Christmas?" The voice on the other end of the phone spat out, undertones of disgust present as he hissed the the word 'Christmas'.

"Fortunately, it is not. There's a girl at St. Bart's who mentioned Magnessun. I want you to run her name through your system and text me everything, every little detail, Mycroft. Her name is Ana Vincent." Sherlock spat back, hastily, wanting to hang up just as impulsively as he had called him, but his brother continued to speak.

"Magnessun is none of your concern, Sherlock. However, I will do the check just to make sure she isn't about to become a concern."

"Text me."

He put the phone back in his pocket, and walked to the other end of the hallway. Turning left in to one of the rooms, he watched a middle aged nurse tidy the sheets as John stood getting dressed.

"He's all yours to take home." The nurse smiled at the two of them, winking.

"For God's sake, we are not…no, actually, never mind, I am not doing this anymore. Let's go, Sherlock," John turned to walk out of the room as Sherlock followed behind, checking his phone frequently. They walked down the hallway in silence. John had noticed Sherlock checking his phone more often than usual and even tried to have a peak as to what he could be looking at. Only an empty thread of a text message to Mycroft. Odd.

"There was a girl in the bonfire with you," both stopped walking.

"Yes, I think I remember…there was something I felt down there only briefly when my nerves and senses were coming back just before the fire began to spread and you came to get me. Is she alright? Is it someone we know? Who is it?"

"She's fine. No, nobody we know. That's what I'm waiting for Mycroft to tell me, which is why - as you've noticed - I keep checking my phone. She's in that room." Sherlock nodded towards the door behind John.

"Right, I suppose I should go see her…" John stood in front of the door, hesitating and unaware of what to say and do upon seeing the girl. He put his hand on the door knob, but before he could open the door, it opened from the inside and Ana stood in front of John, looking past him with eyes fixed on Sherlock. It was only a few seconds later when Sherlock broke the stare and looked away, that she realized John was also present.

"Your hair…you must have been the man placed behind me." She said.

"I believe so. Under the strange circumstances, I can't quite introduce myself in a more formal manner," John answered nervously, chuckling and looking at Sherlock for assistance.

"Her name is Ana. If not for her, you would have retained some severe burns yourself," Sherlock chimed in.

She reached her arm out for John to shake. As he went to shake it, he noticed the burn marks from where the hospital gown sleeves ended.

"Oh, God, I hope that's not from the fire. I'm so terribly sorry, that should not have happened to you!"

She smiled back before speaking, "Please don't apologize. You don't know me nor were you the cause of what transpired. I'm happy you're safe, and I'm fine too."

"Would you like to come to our, well, his, flat for some tea?"

Sherlock's phone vibrated profusely in his coat pocket, and he pulled it out just as he heard John ask her to come for tea (that, too, to Sherlock's flat which he no longer shared with John) Sherlock and Ana both looked at John stunned. What would there be to talk about between the three? She did not want to know them longer than she had to. She liked her solitude and her ability to not get attached to people. She pondered over the point of having tea with both of them.

"No, I don't think I would," she flatly said.

John and Sherlock looked at her together. Unconsciously, Sherlock placed his phone back in to his coat pocket. That had to be the first time someone said no to tea, John was sure of it. He cleared his throat, not knowing what else to do. The woman made it quite hard to uphold a conversation. "Right…well…thank you once again…and I do hope you're alright." John turned, starting to walk towards the elevator. John had now entered the elevator, descending down to the lobby and exiting the hospital. He assumed Sherlock would simply be at the morgue and thought nothing of it. Sherlock leaned closer to Ana's ear. She heard his lips part to speak, almost whisper.

"I would like it if you come for tea but don't think it's out of guilt or an abundance of feelings, I merely want to know how you know Magnessun."

"You've seen the scars on my back. No, Mr. Holmes, I sincerely doubt you want to know how I know Magnessun."

That wasn't Magnessun's M.O., Sherlock thought. He wasn't someone who liked to get his own hands dirty. It wasn't making any sense to him. She wasn't lacking in conviction, thus he ruled out she could have been lying about her story. However, Sherlock found himself still stood there assessing Ana. Nothing was adding up.

His phone suddenly vibrated intensely once again in his coat pocket, which was pressed against Ana's leg, who then looked down at it.

"Is that your phone or are you just excited to see me, Mr. Holmes?" She smiled. It was then that he realized how little distance between the two there truly was, and it was also then he felt her hands lingering around above his groin and thigh region, eventually reaching his coat pocket, pulling out his phone.

"Ana Vincent," she read the text out loud, "…Dark hair, grey eyes, 5"2, 120 lbs. Attachment: Image. The sole late heiress of the Vincent family fortune in Denmark, a strong family of politicians and journalists, a family of which all members were deemed fraudulent and became bankrupt the very same week Charles Augustus Magnessun publicized the family's involvement in the black market and sex trade and trafficking all over Europe," she stopped at that to bite on her lips, and forcing herself to continue as another text came through, "…Ana Vincent thought to have gone missing since the events three years ago, possibly may be dead at the hands of the women's families who were said to have been sold in the sex trade by Vincent's father, Luther Von Vincent. Father committed suicide following the publication and trials, mother found murdered by two women, and brother also still missing. Brother and sister last seen together in 2010, Scotland.

\- MH"

She breathed in hard, arching her head back with great discomfort.

"My family did nothing. Nothing. He ruined us, simply because we were becoming far more successful than his newspaper and we knew he used blackmail and immoral means to get to where he was. There were false testimonies against my father given by women who were paid off by him. Because of his greed, I lost my whole family. Because of his greed."

"Where did you get the scars on your back?" He looked over her shoulders, just as he did earlier. For some reason, him standing over her like that made her afraid, forcing back memories of Magnessun as he prepared to chain and bound her up in the basements day after day for months on end.

"I've told you all I feel comfortable enough telling you. Please, do not make me revisit that."

He didn't.

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm not staying anywhere. I was only brought to London yesterday afternoon."

"Brought?"

"Blindfolded, in a private plane. I know because I felt myself being pushed up a flight of stairs, then being forced to walk while lowering my head and shoved in to a seat, or rather, a seat belt. Then the engines started and I started to get sick as the plane took off, I remember because my head started hurting...then I felt a pinch on my arm, my whole body going numb and blacking out."

"From Scotland."

"No, from Thailand."

"What were you doing in Thailand?"

The question made her squirm. "Please, Mr. Holmes. I don't wish to discuss this matter any further for the day." She put her hand, along with the phone clutched tightly in her palm, in to his coat pocket. She retreated her hand almost instantly, leaving the phone in his pockets. She turned to face his back to him, opening the door to her hospital bed, and entering it. Sherlock did the same, following behind her. She took off her hospital gown, throwing it on the bed. Reflex told Sherlock to look away this time, however she was wearing trousers and a simple long sleeved black top this time around. The tightness of the black shirt made the scarring of whip lash marks and acid burns on her back more prominent, while raising the material, which only perked his curiosity more so.

"I'm a consulting detective, Ms. Vincent."

"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"No, you're supposed to be grateful because you've just become my newest client."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the timeline of the events will follow the events of season three of BBC's Sherlock, there will be some things that are going to be very different. If you do not like the fact that I will have changed some characters or events, please do not read further. You are warned. If you do or do not mind, let me know by commenting and what you think of it. Thanks! Enjoy.


	3. Brothers

Ana sat on the chair pointed towards the two individual sofas which were placed in front of the fireplace. The sunlight paved it's way through the crevices of the dark curtains, illuminating the room without requiring much assistance from the lamp. An elderly woman moved about cleaning the small living abode, paying no attention to the two men - Sherlock and John - that now made their way to the sofas in front of Ana from previously being in Sherlock's bedroom, likely discussing and digesting the information which she had just provided the men with.

"I don't understand." John quizzically looked at Sherlock, as he took his seat on the sofa on the right.

"Of course you don't, John. Ms. Vincent is withholding quite a lot of information from us. Why were you in Thailand, Ms. Vincent?"

"If you're who John and yourself have spent the last three hours trying to convince me of, then I know that you know why, Mr. Holmes." Ana looked away to the arm of her chair, fiddling with a splinter of the wood that came out from her constant nervous plucking. The elderly woman set down the kitchen appliances and exited the room, smiling at Ana before she disappeared.

"Have I missed something?" John stood up, frustrated, and walked to the kitchen to pick up two mugs of coffee. He presented one to Ana and sat down with the other.

"Besides my mug, yes, you've missed quite an ordeal of information," Sherlock turned from John to Ana immediately and continued, getting up and going to the kitchen to pour himself some coffee as well, "I am aware of what you were doing in Thailand, however I wanted to confirm from your own mouth as it is not a delicate matter. You see, John insists I be rather less jumpy to disclose my deductions of clients to them as they are not always something they'd want to be known."

"So what was she doing in Thailand, Sherlock? I'm still lost."

"Look at her overly controlled emotions and commendable apathy. Someone with a history as devastating as hers would surely be oozing out emotions - hell, a waterfall of tears - when talking about it with two strangers, however Ana's learned to master her emotions. At the hospital when you invited her for tea, she aptly refused, suggesting an inability to trust. Specifically, an inability to trust men. I say men because 3 female nurses entered her room and she allowed for them to give her medication, but when the fourth nurse entered - a male - she refused and sent him away to fetch another woman. From that alone, you can tell she's had a traumatic event alter her emotionally, an event after the downfall of her family," he stopped to breath and looked at Ana, asking for permission to carry on. He hesitated, then started again, "She was doing prostitution in Thailand. Forced prostitution. Her undertones of an American and also a British accent suggests she's had a luxurious childhood consisting of quite an abundance of travel between America, England and Denmark, so it (prostitution) could not be out of choice. Wait. Hold on…"

Sherlock stood up and walked over to Ana, tugging on his suit trousers by the thighs and getting comfortable before settling himself down by her feet.

"Lift up your jeans," he commanded. She did so, only up to partially above her ankles. "I take that back. Not prostitution, but slavery. The sex trade. Permanent scars around the ankles resemble that of someone who would have been chained and or tied by the legs, quite frequently. None around the neck indicate…"

John coughed. "Stop, Sherlock."

"The intensity of the scars and the way in which they're scattered all around her ankle and calves suggest she was not tied willingly, therefore it was not a simple fetish of her's and someone intimate, but rather that it was by brute force and she put up a struggle."

Ana let go of her jeans and continued to look at Sherlock who sat with his eyes fixed on her ankles, mouth slightly parted open.

"Magnussun?" John asked, unable to look her in the eyes.

"A friend of Magnussun's. Magnussun himself never laid a hand on me."

"What was his name?"

"I was always blindfolded when he was around, sometimes he'd even put headphones in my ears and play music loudly whilst he commenced to…"

Sherlock winced and stood up off the ground, now facing the fireplace with his mug in hand but with no intent to drink the coffee. He placed it on the ledge on top the fireplace and put his hands behind his back looking forward. Ana continued.

"He was the one to bring me to Thailand from London, where I was brought from Scotland. You see, my brother and I came to hide away in Scotland with a distant relative of my mother's. The following morning, she insisted to enrol my little brother in school under a false pre tense so to allow him to carry on having a (somewhat) normal childhood due to him being 7 years old and being easily distracted from the events occurring around him, as he has autism. As she was driving my brother to school, she was pulled over by a group of men in police attire."

"Murdered."

"She was, yes. I was approached by a man dressed in a fine tailored suit, claiming to be a friend of my father's. He assured me he would pick up my brother and bring him to me and then take me to America, where my father owned a private property which he had not yet had registered to his name. He was going to prior his suicide, you see. I was drugged and brought to London where I was kept and…worked for a considerable period of time before my transference to Thailand. My brother was taken away. Of course not by Magnussun, he never likes to get his own hands dirty, but he does have my brother. He keeps him in his house under the illusion that he's his uncle."

"He can't do that, Sherlock. Can he do that?" John stood up, nearly spilling his mug of coffee.

"He can if nobody questions him or challenges his authority. And when you're as powerful as Magnussun, nobody ever does."

"We'll take Ana to Lestrade, or to Mycroft. Surely they'll be able to do something if we can not." Making his way to the door, John grabbed his coat off the hook hanging behind the entrance door. He took Sherlock's coat and eagerly stretched his hands out, waiting for him to follow him as well. He did not.

"Sherlock?"

Ana turned to face John. "I'm a fugitive in my country, whether I'm guilty or not. Your government is not responsible for me, nor will they feign compassion once the Denmark authorities are made aware of my whereabouts. I can not risk making my presence known more than I already have done so."

She grabbed her own coat, and took Sherlock's and set it back on the hook. Sherlock had not moved at all from where he stood in front of the fireplace. Ana breathed in and opened the door.

"I thank you for listening but I can not have you assist my endeavours as you'd become accessories to harbouring fugitives," she looked away from Sherlock and faced John instead. "I had told Mr. Holmes I was not interested in making a bigger case of this but he insisted I come for tea - or rather coffee - and that I can not be aided. Thank you once again." She stepped out of the room and commenced down the stairs.

Sherlock's phone vibrated and he pulled it out to only to see a text from Mycroft, which simply read "Do not get attached. Remember Redbeard. - MH." He put the phone back in to his pocket before John jolted towards Sherlock in haste, calling his name out and shaking him from his spell of silence.

"You can't let her leave, she's got nowhere to live!"

"What do you want me to do about her failures?"

"For God's sake, it is not her fault. You've got a perfectly empty room above this one which I know for a fact is not being rented out. Stop her and convince her to stay with you, even if temporarily, or so help me God, I will punch you again and this time, much, much lower on your body. Go now!"

"Do you expect me to start inviting every single one of my clients to live with me while I work for them from this point on? People are not pets, John."

"Not every single one of your clients, no, however she is not like all of your other clients. She has no home, no family, no where to live and she does not know anyone in the country!"

"Not. My. Problem."

Sherlock marched over to the window, bending down and picking up a violin and started to tune it in an annoyed manner. John stood there with his mouth shut sternly, continuing to stare at Sherlock until he looked his way.

"What?"

"I'll give you a pack of cigarettes if you do."

Sherlock set down the violin.

"Will you get rid of the moustache?"

"Why?"

"I can't be seen around an old man. It makes you look ancient, John." He walked over to the coat hanger and gathered his trademark black coat and purple scarf, making his way down the stairs and out the door.

John sighed, before leaving the apartment and calling Sherlock a dickhead under his breath.

—

This winter was quite a cold one than any Ana had seen in her adult years. While it lacked in snow, the ferocious winds more than made up for it. She stuffed her gloveless hands in to the pockets of her coat in an attempt to warm herself, but it was useless as there was an evident hole on the inside which allowed for the wind to seep through enough to make her uncomfortable enough.

"Ms. Vincent!"

Ana turned around to see a familiar red faced, curly haired man running behind her waving his right arm to draw her attention. She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him as he lessened his pace after realizing she had, in fact, spotted him. He caught his breath as he walked her way. Ana struggled to keep her eyes open because of the bright sun shining straight in to her vision, blocking her from seeing anything for a brief second, the very second in which she found herself standing in front of the man. Thankfully, his tall figure blocked the sun as he looked down at her once more.

"Mr. Holmes."

"Ms. Vincent."

"I am sorry to have troubled you, but I can not —" She stopped mid-sentence as he looked away, wincing. It was then that she looked down to see him removing his gloves and handing it to her. She wasn't sure what he expected her to do with them. "Put them on, Ana."

"That's the first time you've said my first name while addressing me. And here I was getting quite used to Ms. Vincent," she guiltily took his gloves, accidentally brushing her cold hands with his warm ones, making him shudder. "When you say Ms. Vincent, I finally feel like I'm a respectable human being again. God, I'd forgotten I was one for a while."

They started walking together after she said that, both silent for a brief moment.

"I—"

"I—"

Both said at the same time, making Ana smile to herself and lower her head to allow him to continue.

"There's a restaurant I know. Let me take you to dinner, Ms. Vincent."

She thought it over, Sherlock noted, much longer than she thought over John's proposal for tea, thus she likely wanted to go for it. She declined nonetheless. How expected, he thought.

"I will not hurt you. Judging by how comfortable you were around me when I walked in to your room in the hospital when you stood nearly nude tells me that you know this for a fact, yet you are trying to force yourself to believe otherwise. Which is natural considering what you've gone through and I do not judge you for that. John will not hurt you either. While I agree with you in not trusting the mass of the populace, good people are not entirely mythical. They do exist."

"Are you asking me to lower my barriers?"

"Not at all, in fact, you'd be naive to do so. But perhaps not punish yourself as to maintain them 24/7."

"Alright. You're paying."

"Not necessary, the shop owner owes me a favour and will gladly serve anyone he spots in my company."

He lifted the collars of his coat to mask his cheeks from the wind coming from the East, hitting his face directly. Luckily for Ana, his large frame lessened the hurt for her from the winds. She looked at him, wanting to continually give him her thanks, and just as she was about to speak, he came to a sudden stop, looking up above her head. Before she could ask why he had stopped, he was walking in to the small door of a tiny diner-esque place, as she followed.

The next half an hour was spent in silence while waiting on their orders, neither left with much to say, or rather, not knowing where to start. The restaurant owner came over to say hello to Sherlock, and stayed to praise him until he was needed in the kitchen. Frankly, Ana was relieved he had come to add something between the less than limited conversation between him and her. The food was delivered, and Ana eyed her plate of cream cheese and spinach fettucine with delight, waiting for Sherlock to start first before herself. As soon as he lifted his fork to delve in to his food, she did the same, although with much more excitement than him.

"There was something of importance I wanted to discuss with you, regarding your living quarters and other necessities the entirety of your stay in London," he bit on the small piece of meat which latched on to his fork. His eyes remained on his food as he spoke, until the metal of Ana's fork clashed against her plate, dropping from her hand.

"Sorry, I — uh, the fork, I didn't —"

"It's fine," he set down his fork and placed his hands under his chin, a sight all too familiar to Ana now. "We'll talk first, then eat, if that's what you prefer."

"Thank you," she straightened the fork in the plate and looked at him. "To be honest, I hadn't thought of that. I could go to America —"

"But you won't because your brother is here. Sentiment."

"Do you have a brother, Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes."

"Then you'd know the extents one is willing to go to for their siblings."

It was admirable, really. Sherlock had the advantage of having a brother in the British government - in fact, he was the British government - and he had never been in her position so he could not relate, but he found her loyalty and love admirable nonetheless, if not naive.

"Say Magnussun has your brother —"

"It is a matter of fact that he has my brother."

"How do you know that?"

"Because before I was taken to Thailand, as I told you and Mr. Watson, I was first brought to London and kept in an underground facility which I ran away from, stealing some equipment from the weapons garage and I went to Magnussun's home. For two days, I hid in a tree and watched him, making sure he didn't hurt my brother —"

"Two days?" Sherlock lifted his left eyebrow.

"Yes, two days—" Ana continued.

"Why two days?"

"If you'd just let me fin—"

"Sorry, habit." He smirked.

"I tried to kill him!"

Thankfully, the restaurant was not too packed that night and nobody was in her vicinity to have heard what she'd almost nearly screamed out. "And failed." Sherlock said, picking up his fork and started to break pieces of his food and start eating again.

"Which is when he got impatient with me and took me to his friend I also mentioned, sending me to Thailand. I was there for a year up until yesterday."

"Why you, Ana Vincent? Why that specific bonfire, why along with John?"

"I don't know, Mr. Holmes. You're the detective, not me."

"Indeed I am. We've digressed. I do apologize, it is a bad habit of mine…along with many others. What I wanted to tell you was that you will stay with me during the duration of the investigation and events that transpire and until we can arrange something for you. There's a spare room upstairs right above my bedroom which will be yours from now on and of course you will be sharing the kitchen and bathroom facilities with me. I will not take no for an answer, and as John has made it quite clear, neither will he. Now eat."

She did not question him nor want to, happy at the offer and rather flushed since this was the nicest act of kindness anyone had bestowed upon her in a very, very long time. She picked up her fork once more and did as she was told.

"I do hope you don't mind me playing the violin at odd hours of the night."

"It would be a pleasure and an honour, Mr. Holmes. I love the violin."

"Just Sherlock. Not Mr. Holmes. Please, Ana."

The two ate in unison, savouring the taste of the food and the moment itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the timeline of the events will follow the events of season three of BBC's Sherlock, there will be some things that are going to be very different. If you do not like the fact that I will have changed some characters or events, please do not read further. You are warned. If you do or do not mind, let me know by commenting and what you think of it. Thanks! Enjoy.


	4. Night Terrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The end of the following chapter contains scenes of a horribly graphic nature.

Sherlock and John had been busy that night and Ana was left in the apartment by herself. She was seated in the same chair she was in earlier that morning when she told Sherlock about her ordeals over the last few years. He had left her his spare phone, and she debated calling to ask when he would be back. The clock struck 11 PM, adding to her anxiety with each tock of the clock. It was then when the door creaked open, and Sherlock peered only his head in. He looked around the room until his eyes locked with Ana's grey eyes, and he pulled his entire body through the frame, shutting the door behind. He held a plastic bag in his hands which hung from his right hand along with the apartment keys and his phone.

He walked over to the table and chairs in the centre of the kitchen while Ana looked away to not give away the fact that she had been pleased to see him. Setting the plastic bag on the table, he pulled a chair out and sat, looking up to her seconds after she looked away. He looked down to her hands; the right one playing with another splinter of wood that came out the arm of the chair, and her left one holding tightly on to the phone he had left her with. He observed how the palm of her left hand was sweaty, suggesting she'd held on to it for a while, probably deciding whether to call him or not. He smiled to himself, before going back to his tired expression.

"Come sit. I grabbed some drinks and food for you. It's Chinese. The food anyways." He reached his hand in to the plastic bag, pulling out two rectangular boxes piled on top of each other, and two cans of an energy drink.

She collected herself and put on a pair of slippers which Mrs. Hudson, the older lady she had seen earlier, had given her. Along with many other clothes and personal hygiene products Ana might require in case she is too shy to ask Sherlock and John of. She dragged her feet to the kitchen table, still clenching the phone in her hand and sat opposite to Sherlock. She had already begun living with him, and she did not want to enter his personal space too much in case he was the type to think of it as clingy or needy.

Sherlock patted on the chair right next to him and smiled her way. She got off the chair she was already sitting on, and sat next to him instead. He handed her the take out box and can of energy drink and the two began to ate.

"Thank you, Sherlock." She swallowed the dumpling and made sure nothing was in her mouth before she spoke, making sure not to make eye contact with him.

"For giving me a place to live, the food, everything. But I can't have you spending so much on me without feeling a little bit of —"

"There's no need to feel guilty. That's the nature of money, it comes, it goes. Futile to wallow over such a funny little concept." He struggled with his chopsticks, adamant to get the dumpling on to the damned thing and in to his mouth.

"Except it's not so little. My father taught me the value of money and to never take it for granted and I don't plan to start doing that now, and use the last two years of hardship as some method of justification to extort your money and generosity —"

Growing frustrated (and slightly amused) by Sherlock's struggle, Ana took his chopsticks and held them in her hand, showing him how to do so. She then returned them back to him. He took it and looked at her gratuitously, before bringing a dumpling to his mouth and holding it there. He didn't put it in his mouth yet, but instead started to speak.

"It's not extortion when it's being done out of a person's will of genuinely wanting to do it." He bit the dumpling.

She blushed and continued to eat, both quiet for the next fifteen minutes while finishing their food. After they had finished, Sherlock took the leftover and box, and threw it in the garbage. He picked up the energy drink and drank it down in one sip, turning to face her from the living room.

"Get up." He spoke so quietly, she had to come closer to him to hear what he was saying.

"What?"

"Go inside my room, close the door very quietly and be still. Now."

She did as she was instructed, closing the door behind her and sliding down to sit against the door. With her back against the door, she turned her head to the left and put her ear to hear what was happening. Seconds after she had come in to the door, she heard the door of the living room pry open, and an object tapping against the ground, getting closer and closer to her.

"Brother mine." Sherlock simply looked at the short, funny looking man in front of him, still holding the energy drink. Thankfully, Ana had taken her energy drink to the room and the garbage had been cleared out so as not to leave any trace of Ana for Mycroft to see.

Mycroft looked around, inspecting the apartment.

"You know, all you have to do is ask if you want me to hire a housekeeper. Although I suppose Mrs. Hudson —"

"Mycroft!"

Ana heard Sherlock's voice raise, almost surprising and shaking her.

Sherlock walked around Mycroft and went to sit on the sofa behind him. Mycroft sat down on the couch in front of him, setting his cane next to the arm rest of the couch while moving about to get comfortable. Ana could no longer hear their conversation, just faint voices, talking. She closed her eyes, only realizing how tired she had been. That, and the massive box of Chinese she had just completed put her in a blissful daze. Sherlock had bought her food for the second time in one day and she was still guilt ridden, although sleep was a bigger concern of hers for the time being. When she found herself dozing off, she quietly moved her body and laid down on the floor, not wanting to get in his bed for three reasons. One, it would creak and make more noises than the floor could manage and two, she did not feel right. Lastly, she did not ever want to be in a man's bed again.

Outside, Sherlock and Mycroft commenced talking about a case he had been on that evening with John unbeknownst to Ana.

"Congratulations on preventing a terrorist attack. I would have brought a cake but I'm afraid the bakery down the road doesn't have one with that precise text."

"Don't try to be funny, Mycroft. Never try to funny."

Mycroft's smile faded to a grumpy frown.

"Anyways," Mycroft sat upright and leaned in closer to Sherlock, with his hands placed on his knees, "Before I go, how is that woman? Ana Vincent? I hope you received my text, since I didn't get a response from you afterwards."

"She's fine." Sherlock gave Mycroft an empty, emotionless look - wanting to be careful of giving away any sign of his lying.

"Don't try to lie to me, Sherlock. Never try to lie to me."

"John and Mary are taking care of it. I have far too much going on to babysit a fugitive, Mycroft." Sherlock got up, walking over to the kitchen and then eventually to the fridge.

"Indeed you do, brother mine," Mycroft stood up, picking up his cane, "But remember this for your future…endeavours, let's call it. People are not pets, Sherlock. Don't make them so. Granted, they die eventually and there is no assurance of them outliving you, but you - we - can not be attached to them. We can not give them the love they require. It's not…us."

Sherlock took out a jar full of transparent liquid. Inside the jar, there were three cow tongues jammed inside. Pretending like he had not heard Mycroft's advice, he walked over to the sink and emptied the liquid, being careful as not to drop the tongues in to the sink.

Mycroft grumbled and started to walk out of the apartment, until a small yelp came from Sherlock's bedroom. Noticing that, he looked over to Sherlock who was clearly jolted by it as well.

Ana lay unconscious on the floor, sweat starting to form around her temples. Her body in a fetal position, she buried her head deep in to her knees and although she was asleep, she kept her mouth pressed against her pyjama bottoms and knees so to keep herself from making any noises in her unconscious state which she had a habit of doing when she had nightmares of her year spent in Thailand.

Despite her best effort to not make a noise, one very tiny one did escape. If it was any one other than the Holmes brothers, the noise would go amiss and nobody would have noticed however, unfortunately for her, it was.

"Mice. There's a mouse in my room, I'm conducting a new genetic experiment regarding brain tumour. I think I'm on to something." Sherlock still did not look at Mycroft as he spoke, afraid he would give himself away if he did.

"So which one is it?" Mycroft mused.

"Sorry?"

"You said mice and mouse. So which one is it? Is it a mouse or is it mice?" Mycroft asked, twiddling with his cane while looking at the door curiously.

"Are you going to be long here? I have to go to the morgue and I'm waiting for you to leave so I can lock up." Sherlock answered, avoiding the question hoping Mycroft would simply think he had not heard it in the first place. Another habit of his as pointed out by John.

Mycroft smiled and exited the apartment. Sherlock quickly went to close his curtains before walking quickly to his room. He held the door knob, twisting and opening the door slowly in case she was leaning against it. He did not want to hit her accidentally, and he didn't. Walking in to the room, he looked around until he looked at the ground where Ana lay curled up in a ball. He stood there holding the knob, not knowing what else to do. He sighed and lifted the creases of his trouser and bent down on his knees. He reached his hand out and placed it on her shoulder, shaking her slowly.

"Ana…" Quiet, but loud enough for her to hear, he shook her shoulders.

"Ana, get up."

Ana opened her eyes and looked up at him, eyes red and face pink, with dried tears down her cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to —"

"It's fine, Ana." Sherlock got back up, giving her his hand and she picked herself up as well. "Good night, Ms. Vincent."

Ana walked dreamily out of his bedroom and up the stairs to her own bedroom, knocking herself in to the wall two times before finding her bed and falling down on it in the same position she had been in on Sherlock's floor.

For an hour, no sleep came. When it did come, Ana shuffled in the bed, gripping on the bedsheets and duvet and pulling it off of the bed - hurling them to the floor. Sweat trickled down her temples, eyes wide shut in her slumber. Her fingers let go of the bedsheets, and she subconsciously lay in the bed in a fetal position facing the window. The sweat continued to flow, her entire body shuddering and tears forming around the eye ducts. Her lips formed a strained, pained expression as she slept while her mind collected memories of the last year and played them in her head, over and over again.

_"Spread your fucking legs."_

_Ana did so, not wanting to disobey and be punished for not doing what she was told. This had become an every day occurrence now for the past three months, and she'd seen first hand where disobeying would get the other girls. She did not want to be in that position again. Her back still hurt from the acid thrown on it a month ago when she last went against what the men had ordered her to do. She didn't even know what they looked like, only the pain of the things they were capable of doing to her._

_"Did you hear me, you stupid slut?" His voice roared in the empty cell-like room, as he placed his body on top of her, positioning his groin directly on top of hers, grinding the belt buckle against her pelvis._

_She spread her legs, crying, and allowing him passage to bite and lick at her neck and breasts. Her hands hung from the ceiling, held tightly together with an intricate twisting of ropes and other instruments she had not been familiar with. She felt him move his body off of her after two minutes or so of molesting her body. Because she was blindfolded, she had to rely on her hearing to expect what was to come. The man paced around the room and returned to where she was hung, standing for a few seconds before he grabbed her shoulders and turned her body to have her face his back to him._

_Whoosh._

_A wave of tears rolled down her cheeks, without stopping as he struck her backside and legs with a leather whip nonstop for two minutes, switching angles every few seconds. The whip hit the burns from a month ago, making the bandages ooze with blood once more. Her toes curled inwards on the cold, wet brick floor, while her legs shut tightly in response to the whip. Her mouth was pegged shut with clamps to stop her from screaming and disturbing the cells next to hers belonging to other sex slaves, for they'd be going through the same thing as her right now. When it wasn't pegged, it would be stuffed with her own blood engulfed underwear or the men's underwear or something equally as vile._

Her sweating carried on as she bit in to the pillow, under the impression that it was one of the many things they would have her bite on when they raped her.

_She felt blood drip down her legs from her back, still standing on her toes. The man stopped and came to stand in front of her. He tugged at the clamps before he removed them, biting her bottom lip and pulling on it hard until he drew blood from them too. She screamed softly and cried, bitting her lips to stop the flow of the blood. He picked her face up by her chin, holding it in front of him and admiring his handy work._

_"Please stop. Please." She begged, stifling back the noises and tears._

_"Why would I ever stop? This is so much fun."_

_"Stop." Another voice boomed, as the door of the cell opened. A man walked through, towards Ana. His voice was much softer. She didn't recognize it. She didn't care, at least the other man let go of her face and exited the room, but not before slapping her ass and squeezing his nails deep in to her skin. She bit her lips again to stop herself from making any kind of noise. A loud scream came from behind her, right in her ears. It was the man who had just raped Ana. The scream was followed by an even louder thud. Then some shuffling of feet as the man ran out of the room, hurling curse words at the new man._

_"Hello Ana. You look very beautiful today." The mysterious man spoke. His voice was too out of place for a place like this. It was playful sounding, almost innocent._

_"Oh my, I almost forgot. Silly *me*," he drew his hands from his trouser pockets and pulled out headphones and a small iPod, which he placed on top of her left nipple and held there. He looked around the room until he found the clamps on the ground, and he grabbed a chunk of her skin, along with the iPod and clamped it together._

_He put the earphones in to her ears and fiddled with the iPod briefly, disregarding her breasts and body when his knuckles brushed against it. Oh no, please not him, please, Ana thought. This was the first time she was hearing his voice although she was far too familiar with his methods. She would never forget his voice, even if she was to only hear it once. Then, the music started as he smiled to himself._

_Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, ha, ha, ha, ha, I'm stayin' alive…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the timeline of the events will follow the events of season three of BBC's Sherlock, there will be some things that are going to be very different. If you do not like the fact that I will have changed some characters or events, please do not read further. You are warned. If you do or do not mind, let me know by commenting what you think of it. Thanks! Enjoy.


	5. Dead Men Tell No Tales

Her eyes opened and she panicked briefly, not recognizing the dark oak which her face was pressed up against until she lifted herself off of the ground and realized she had fallen off the bed. She tried her hardest each morning to erase the dreams from the night before, but they weren't just dreams, they were reality. They were her reality. Shaking off the headache and her thoughts, Ana made her way to the window so to be able to open the curtains. Before she even got anywhere near the window, she heard footsteps making their way up the stairs outside in a quick manner and the door opened after a familiar voice called out her name.

"Ana?" Sherlock peered his head in, "I heard a loud bang while in my study, I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I seemed to have fallen off the bed. I'm—"

"No need to apologize. Come downstairs and have some breakfast before my client comes in."

"Your client?" Ana refrained from letting her yawning escape her and tried her hardest to maintain eye contact with Sherlock as he spoke. Instead, she tried to look on the ground but she was met with a white bed sheet where Sherlock's feet should have been. She looked up and it was then that she realized that Sherlock was not in fact wearing anything at all - that is, anything but a bed sheet he held wrapped around his body as he peered his head in through the door.

"Consulting detective, me, yes. Do try to keep up."

"Are you wearing a bedsheet?" Ana stifled back a laugh.

"Yes. What's wrong with a bedsheet?" Sherlock quizzically asked her at once, looking down at his choice of appearance.

"Is it comfortable?"

"Very." He peered his head out of the room.

She reached for the curtains before she heard Sherlock spoke again, "Considering I'm harbouring a fugitive, I highly suggest you do not open those curtains at the present moment." And then he was gone and she was alone again.

She realized she wore the same clothes from two days before and was not too fond of wearing the ones Mrs. Hudson gave her for various reasons, the primary of those being that they were not hers. Ana was a very prideful girl from a very prideful family; to rely on others was not something the children were taught to do or take part in, however they were taught to help those that needed it. It was the perfect balance. She already felt guilty and apologetic about being given a room by Sherlock to live in without her being able to give him anything in return, that she did not intend to utilize more of his resources than necessary. He was going out of his way to buy her food and allowing her to use his facilities, she had to find a way to pay him back or at least take some of the responsibility herself. She had never had to work before, but it was time to grow up and be responsible.

Smelling herself, she was glad the sweating at night wasn't as bad as she thought and there was no distinctive odour or sweat stains. She sprayed perfume graciously on her body regardless, being careful not to let it get on her burn marks on her arms and legs which were healing very slowly for her liking. The second degree burn marks from the bonfire still marred her body, but the pain had sibsided greatly and she was able to move her body without wincing with each motion. Despite that, some areas still responded when her garment and hygienic products made contact with them. As soon as her body was fully healed and she formulated a plan as to what she was going to do regarding her living accommodations and whatever else that would be needed, Ana would leave here instantly. She sat on the bed now, before realizing the throbbing pain in her head was still present. She laid back down on it and closed her eyes once again, only to immediately open them.

A few minutes had passed and she nearly forgot she was asked to come down in the first place. Picking herself off the bed, she made her way down the stairs and directly in to the living room, where she was greeted by John. He offered her a seat on the sofa next to him, patting on it but she declined and walked over to the kitchen first where Sherlock sat on the table looking in to a microscope. He was no longer in his bedsheets, but rather a Burgundy velvet robe which accentuated his body better than she'd seen it do to anyone else. His collar bones and pale skin were highlighted especially as the sun fell on him from the window. Ana couldn't help but be entranced by how perfect his skin was. She caught herself staring at him, but he had not realized this and continued to look in to the microscope. It was then that she realized what she had been doing when John coughed and smiled to her from behind his newspaper. When Sherlock looked to him, he was immersed back in the newspaper and Ana looked away quickly trying to figure out how to work the coffee maker. Sherlock brushed it off and went back to his experiment.

"Nice bed sheet, by the way." Ana gave up on the machine and came to sit in front of him.

"Clothes are boring and distract me from thinking. On the rare occurrences that I do get some sleep, I'm awake earlier than more than half of the commonwealth and did not expect to have a client - let alone you and John - at this house. I hope you didn't mind."

"This isn't my home, it's yours. Of course I don't mind." she fiddled with her fingers, still not looking at him as she spoke. The rustling of the newspapers indicated John was done with them, and seconds later he managed to join the two in the kitchen. He had noted that Ana was attempting to work the machine earlier and gave up in a frustrated manner, so he went to pour some in for her before he sat down on the table, handing her the cup. She smile warmly and accepted, and he smiled back at her.

"You've got questions," Sherlock continued, without removing his eyes from the two eye holes of the microscope, "Your constant fidgeting and indecisive inability to make eye contact with me is more than obvious. And loud."

"Who was that man that came last night? Does he know that I'm here? I know I shouldn't have been eavesdropping last night, even though it was hard to even if I wanted to, but you yelled and —" Ana stopped herself there, thinking she was outstepping her boundaries.

"You asked me if I had a brother, that was him. No, I don't think he knows and even if he did, you have nothing to worry about."

"He's the British —" John spoke, with sudden panic in his voice.

Finally, Sherlock looked up at Ana - completely disregarding John - and assured her in an almost forceful manner. "Nothing to worry about. That wasn't what you wanted to ask me, though, what was it?"

How did he know?

"No. I wanted to ask if it was possible for me to go out today and look for a job, since if I'm staying here, I should be able to pay for my own food and facilities."

"You're right, you should."

"Sherlock!" John groaned in annoyance. Again being ignored, Sherlock got up and retrieved a rather old looking sandwich from the fridge and commenced to eat it.

"However, instead of you going out, I know a place that's hiring within a minute's proximity of this very room."

"You do?" Ana looked up.

"Well…not necessarily hiring but they will hire if I tell them to hire. The owner owes me a favour. There's a very small restaurant located directly behind this apartment, and if you exit from the back entrance of the garden, you'll find yourself opposite the back entrance of the kitchen of the bar."

"Does the entirety of the commonwealth owe you a favour or what?!" As if John had read Ana's mind, he said smiling with a hint of gratefulness in his voice. This left Ana stunned. Why were these two so keen on helping her? Albeit Sherlock had his unusual method of doing so whereas John was far more forward about it. She was just a stranger to them.

"No, not the entire commonwealth," Sherlock tightened his robe and got up, shoving the sandwich away in disgust, although it was nearly finished at this point, "...but the day's only just begun" He began to pace the living room impatiently, jumping from the window to the fireplace within a second and then sat down on the sofa with his legs crossed, one above the other, in the most childish manner.

"Where the bloody hell is this client?"

Ana was confused, he was so calm and collected only a few minutes ago and now he had gone from 0 to 60 without even a warning. John leaned in towards her as she brought the mug to her lips shrugging off Sherlock.

"He does that sometimes. A bad habit of his," John spoke quietly. "but he's a good man."

"I don't doubt it." Ana found herself at conflict within her head again. Having heightened her barriers over the last few years, it was near impossible to lower them again to another man let alone two of them. Could she really trust them? What if they had ulterior motives regarding her and this was just a sick way for them to extort whatever it is they wanted from her? Could they be playing a sick game with her, despite knowing her past? Did they see her as another easy whore to play around with? She clenched harder on to the mug, but kept her facial expression the same. John wasn't as observant as Sherlock, she had realized by now. It was a relief he was consumed in his own antics than dissecting her otherwise he would know what was on her mind. She took a long sip, sitting with John who seemed to be beginning to get rather restless as well. He constantly looked at the watch on his wrist and was beginning to sweat as well although it was the middle of the winter.

The doorbell rang, and both Sherlock and John jolted towards the door. Ana got up and walked over to the computer table and sat in front on the chair instead of the sofas. She put her legs on the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees and put her chin on the knees as she watched an elderly woman walk through as John helped her to sit on the "client's chair" as he had told her. The woman looked at Ana in an odd manner, almost as if she recognized her. A shiver ran down Ana's back. When everyone was sat, Ana couldn't look away from the woman who didn't look away from her. Sherlock and John shared a confused look.

"Do you…um, do you know this woman, Ana?" John looked at Ana.

"No…she's scaring me, John."

The woman dressed as if she was of Gypsy heritage, with various rings of different colours stones adorning her fingers and many piercings on her lips and body. Her hair was long and wavy, not a hint of white or grey in it which was remarkable considering the wrinkles on her skin indicated her age to be anywhere from 75-85. She wore a black, dress like tunic with gold embroidery around the neck, and a red and black corset which barely clung to the little flesh on her body.

"Moriarty."

The woman looked at Ana, pointing her frail finger and then back to Sherlock who looked at Ana again. John's face had gone pale and he stared at Sherlock. All the while, Ana was confused.

"What does that mean? What's a Moriarty, Sherlock?" Ana put her legs down on the ground and looked at him eagerly. He continued to look at her, up and down. Unbeknownst to Ana, Sherlock was analyzing every movement of hers, every change in expression, and everything she was saying.

"What do you mean by Moriarty?" John stood up and hovered over the old woman.

"She knows," she looked back at Ana, "Poor girl. She knows him very well even though she doesn't know she knows."

"Alright, that makes no sense. What are you playing at?"

"What does she mean I know? Who's Moriarty?" Ana got out of the chair and was ready to walk to the door. Who or what was Moriarty? Was it one of Magnessun's mens who had found her? Did Sherlock and John told them about him. "Did you sell me out to someone?! Oh god, what did you do?" She grabbed her black coat off the hanger and John ran towards her. John and Sherlock's impatience she noticed earlier suddenly began to make sense to her. They were going to sell her to someone, she was sure of it. Panic and anxiety made their way crawling up to Ana's throat and tears formed in her eyes, blinding her with fear.

"Stop, Ana, it's not like that! Be still," he grabbed the other side of the coat and Ana tugged it towards her in a futile attempt, as Jon held on to it tightly. He could tell she was having a panic attack and talked her through it, assuring her it was not what she was thinking.

The two looked back at Sherlock who had not shifted an inch from his position. The woman and him were locked eye to eye.

"He's dead," he said. "Moriarty is dead. Who are you?"

"I see things and I know who you are, Mr. Holmes, and I know Ana Vincent and I know who she knows. All the men that have been inside her, taking turns —"

Ana let go of the coat and ran to the woman, intent on slapping the woman. When she reached the vicinity, the frail body of the woman stopped her.

"What do you mean you know?" Ana grabbed the woman by the neckline of her dress instead, rattling her body in her hands. The woman struggled and Ana let go upon John grabbing her arms and pulling her away.

"I'm a psychic, you see," the woman brushed off the creases on her dress and sat back down. Sherlock scoffed at that, and perched his back in the sofa at once. John sighed and sat down as well.

"Moriarty's been dead for two years," Sherlock put his left leg on top of his right, "You conspiring gypsies and your backwards, fraudulent beliefs. If it were the middle ages, maybe someone would take you seriously however unfortunately for you, it is not. You know nothing and try to profit off of the naivety of others. You advertised yourself as a client under a false name and occupation, only to waste mine and my colleague's time, exploiting and perturbing an already mentally scattered woman by harassing her. Show yourself out before I call the police and have you arrested for identity theft."

The woman stood up and continued to walk to the door. When she walked past Ana, she looked at her in a sympathetic manner, almost pitiful. When she had gone, John sat back down to where he was sitting prior to the disturbance. Ana stood by the door where she was and could not shake off the fear and grew anxious. She gripped her coat in her hands tightly.

"How did she know I was here? Is this a joke?"

"No, it isn't a joke," John turned to Sherlock, "How did she know Ana was here? And what did she mean she knows?"

Sherlock hesitated.

"I'm sure there's a perfectly sagacious explanation. Regardless, Moriarty is dead."

"Who's Moriarty?" Ana's grip on her coat stayed tightened.

"A very dangerous - and a very dead - man," Sherlock got up and grabbed his coat which was hung next to Ana. He opened the door and urged for her to exit, "Let's go to that restaurant and talk about your new job. John, do clean up and lock when you leave."

As the two exited, John shouted back while running behind them.

"I don't live here anymore," he locked the door and grumbled under his breath, "…and I am certainly not your housemaid, Sherlock!"

A few miles away from 221B Baker street, the gypsy woman who had terrorized Ana got out of the a black limo in front of a small condominium on a quiet and empty hill top community. She stood by the vehicle, pulled out a cigarette and waited for a man to peer his head through the window as it rolled down. When he didn't, she pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and knocked on the window a few times.

"Hey, where's my fucking money?" She banged on the window again and again, frantically and pissed off.

"I did what you wanted me to do, now where's my fucking money, you cocksucker?!"

The old woman pressed all of her body weight on to the limo, which started to move slowly down the hill. The woman banged more and more, and the car stopped at once. The window rolled down a few inches, and the old woman collected herself.

"Fucking deaf cunt," she reached her hand inside anticipating the money she had been promised, "It's about god damn time."

A gunshot.

The man inside stuck out a gun and shot her hand, but the bullet missed all but two of her fingers and pierced the old woman's stomach as she fell on to the ground and her body began to roll off the hill as the car slowly drove by along with her body, watching each turn of it. When the body stopped moving and lay still on the side of the pavement, the limo then again stopped. A man inside opened the door and came out of the limo, Stayin' Alive playing quietly on the radio inside. He carefully stepped over the body, and bent down next to it. The chauffeur came out of the car at this moment and as he proceeded to haul the woman's body in to the limo with him, the other man stopped him. He grabbed the still lit cigarette and put it in his mouth, inhaling it a few times before coughing and spitting on the corpse.

"These things will kill you, don't you know?"


	6. A Museum of Scars

It was past midnight and Ana had just finished her last shift of the month. As tired as she was, she was not in the mood to go home just yet. The entirety of her month and more stay in London, she had not once left the safety of Baker Street. While she wasn't an extrovert to begin with, nor did she care about sight seeing, it was getting a little lonely and boring in the apartment for her liking. During her shift, Ana wandered out of the restaurant a few times to see whether the lights in Sherlock's apartment would turn on indicating his return home. They did not. John's fiancée, Mary Morstan, had stopped by earlier to the apartment just before Ana's shift. Naturally, John and Sherlock were called in for a case shortly after. He was probably still with John or somewhere else focusing on his odd experiments, and probably would not even notice that she came home a few minutes later. Who was she kidding? This was Sherlock, after all. She learned by now that nothing got past him, even the traces of dust that would collect on her clothes from hanging in the restaurant while she worked.

You'd think Sherlock's personality would be enough to keep Ana entranced by it, but there was very little verbal communication between him and her since she had started to work. When he wasn't on a case or showing off his ability to deduce everything on the planet - nay, in the universe - he wasn't much of a talker. As for John and Mary, they would always try to keep her feeling included in their conversations whenever they were around - which was not very often. When John and Mary did so, Ana made it a mission to keep out of their lives as much as she possibly could despite the happy couple's best efforts. In an attempt to avoid that connection, Ana had taken up nearly ten hour shifts a day, often only coming home (a word she had yet not gotten comfortable with) to bathe, sleep and then back to work once again.

She appreciated John's approaches, but an emotional attachment with these people and a domestic life was not what Ana wanted nor was she able afford at the moment. Although, it would be a lie to say that Sherlock had not enticed a certain emotion out of Ana. Over the last month, even though the conversations between the two were lesser than weekly, Sherlock seemed to have taken quite an interest in her. At least in terms of her wellbeing and health, but she knew he would never admit this to her. He had just as much pride as her, if not more.

Three weeks ago, Ana had caught a cold due to the seeping cold through the hole in her pocket which she attempted to sew, but did not hold for very long. Despite this, she went to work each day and when she got home, there would be tea and soup or something for her, which Sherlock would leave for her before he went back to the hospital he would often go to. At first, Ana assumed these would be just left overs, but one night when John came to visit, he was thrown off and claimed that Sherlock had never done that before and there were never any left overs. When she was better, Ana had noticed Sherlock walk past the restaurant a few times during the week while she was working. Whether it was purely coincidental or not, she'd have liked to think he was keeping an out for her. Perhaps secretly, she wanted to sit down with him and get to know more about him. He knew so much about her that it was almost unfair. He was more than a mystery. It was almost supernatural.

Elias, one of the few men whom she worked with, offered to keep her company despite finishing his shift three hours before her, but Ana humbly denied. He was always trying to strike conversations with her, and she was aware of his intentions and interest in her. She missed that comfort of a person being there, yes, and Elias certainly wanted to be that shoulder. Yet she could not afford to have many people know of her presence. Sherlock had even introduced her to the owner of the restaurant under the false name of Rose Tyler, and suggested that she eventually consider coloring her hair and getting contact lenses. Because she did not want him spending money on her, she said she would once she's made enough money. On a deeper level, Ana did not want to get rid of her dark hair. Her mother always loved it dark and long, so to her, Ana's hair was a reminder of her mother and those mornings in her childhood when they would wake up early to take care of it.

Ana often found her own self in a daze reflecting back on her life. Her mind was the closest thing to a friend she had, even though it harbored more demons than anything else. Grabbing her coat from the back and locking up, she decided to go for a small walk before heading home. Instead of heading out from the back and going through the garden door of the apartment to which she was given the key to, she left from the front. It was well past midnight on a Sunday night, and the London roads were not as busy as they would usually have been the two days before. She basked in the silence, allowing the wind to beat against her face as she wrapped her scarf around her neck and just above her lips. She crouched her shoulders in to her coat to restore the warmth she had lost upon exiting the restaurant but to no avail, the hole in her pocket was still there and she had refused to take Sherlock's gloves again. After a few seconds of embracing the wind, she started to walk down the street, lost in her own head.  
  
 _I wonder what Sherlock is doing right now…_  
  
After about half an hour of walking down a straight path, she realized this was a question she found herself asking more often than she had wanted to lately. She pulled out her phone and opened the contacts, tempted to text or call him to let him know she went for a walk. Just then, the phone vibrated in her hand.

"Text received -

Sherlock: Called restaurant. Not there. Where are you? - SH."

She bit her tongue. What if she just ran away right now? She had enough money from working the past month to afford a ticket out of London to anywhere in England, for now. What the gypsy said was still looming in her head. What if John and Sherlock really were playing with her, waiting to sell her off? She clutched on to the phone tight and disregarded the text.

The phone vibrated again.

"Text received -

Sherlock: ? - SH"

Again.

"Text received -

Sherlock: ? - SH"

She couldn't leave. She had nowhere to go, realistically speaking. No place but here.

Bringing the phone back to the vicinity of her eyes, she began to dial the number. Before she had finished, she fell to the ground with a thud. Ana fell forward on to the ground, head first. The impact of the pavement on her head caused her eyesight to get blurry, but she felt no real pain there. It was her shoulder that had been hit and hurt, with the phone falling on the ground with a crack. The screen had shattered, but the light still was on and she could see his number halfway written out. As she reached for the phone with one hand - the other on her forehead - someone grabbed her legs and pulled her in to the alley parallel to her figure. Before she could scream, the stranger placed his gloved hands over her mouth and slammed her against the brick surface of the alley. A burning pain seared through her shoulder, as the person forced their body on to her. Tears started to well up in Ana's eyes, remembering Thailand and she refused to let this happen again. When the man pushed her in to the wall again as she struggled, she took the chance and kicked at his shin with all her strength. It stopped him for a moment, but Ana kicked again - not allowing him the chance to straight upright fully. His grip on her mouth loosened and she bit his hand as soon as it did, kicking above his shins this time. Her foot met with his crotch, as he fell on his knees.

"You fucking bitch!"

Ana punched his face repeatedly and continued to kick. When he was on the ground writhing in pain, she ran out of the alley - quickly grabbing the phone off the ground - and all the way home. The man did not follow her. When she had reached Baker street, she stopped to catch her breath and leaned against one of the buildings. Paranoid, she looked around to make sure no one had followed her. Each second, she looked back to make sure of this.

When she got to the apartment, she fixed her posture despite how much it pained her to do so. Instead of stopping by the kitchen for dinner, she could not have Sherlock see her right now. He would notice the shoulder immediately. The phone was another story itself. She needed to have that fixed as soon as possible, or even get a new one. She'd device the plan tomorrow. Making her way up the stairs quickly, she got in to her bed immediately without even undressing or taking off her shoes. The phone vibrated in her purse. Ana closed her eyes to ignore it, but it vibrated again.

She reached for it carefully, her shoulder hurting more and more. Before she could pick it up, she sat upright in the bed and slid out of her t-shirt. The bone of the shoulder was definitely misplaced. She took a deep breath, picked up her purse and put it in her mouth. Tears came to her eyes for the second time today, as she bit on the purse and pressed and pulled on her shoulder.

Crick.

The tears continued to roll as she let go of her arm and pulled out the now spit covered purse. She sat there briefly as the pain turned in to a numb feeling, but a relieving one. The burning sensation had quickly gone down and she lay back, almost forgetting the phone.

"Text (1) received -

Sherlock: Made food. In kitchen if hungry. - SH"

"Text (2) received -

Sherlock: Good night, Ms. Vincent. - SH"

Her shift had started later in the afternoon and Ana did not leave her domicile until Sherlock had gone out. Her shoulder was still in pain and there was a bruise forming now, which he surely would not miss and she could not have that. Thinking back to the events of last night, Ana wiped the counter top with abnormal ferocity despite the pain in her arm. Who was that? Why her, again and again and again? Did she radiate a persona that drew psychopaths and rapists?

Elias observed her quietly as he came to the kitchen to pick up the platter for the table that waited outside.

"Everything okay?" He brushed passed her, grabbing the drink she had set next to her and put it on the tray along with the food. He was trying his hardest not to make eye contact with her so not to lose his focus on the tray and drop it.

"Just a cramp, nothing to worry about." Ana quickly spoke and turned her face away from him so he could not see her pained expression as she clutched her shoulder and began to massage it. He didn't press the matter further. On his way out, he realized he had not grabbed the fork and knife which lay washed next to the sink Ana stood against with her hands pressed hard on the counter of. He turned back around quietly, feeling as if he was pestering her with his presence and made his way next to her.

Not realizing Elias had not yet left, Ana pulled her hair up in to a bun with her fingers, frustrated, only momentarily when she noticed Elias looking at her shoulder (the bruises) and back (the scars). Recognizing that expression, she quickly set her hair back down and turned to walk away.

"Has he done that to you?"

"Who?"

"That bloke Sherlock you're living with."

She stopped but did not look back at him. "Why would he do that?"

"Has he hurt you? The scars on your back, it was him, wasn't it?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he's a psychopath, isn't he? That's what everyone says."

"People are easily impressionable these days. You shouldn't believe everything you hear from people's mouth, Elias."

Ana continued to walk out to the kitchen, but not before she heard Elias scoff behind her and walking the other way. The table Elias was serving was the last and she was only waiting for the couple to leave so she could clean up and leave after that. Hearing Elias accuse Sherlock of such an atrocity made her stomach churn. Was he capable of that?

She stood in front of the cash register, pretending to count the money and scribble something down whilst she waited for the man and woman to finish eating and leave. Once they did, she cleared the table and quickly cleaned up, grabbing some left over food from the buffet to take home for her and Sherlock. In a few moments, she saw Elias come out of the kitchen with a pair of keys, and the two locked up and went separate ways.

Earlier in the morning, she recalled John mentioning a bachelor party and that Sherlock had said he was not going to be home that evening so she expected to have the flat to herself - much to her discomfort - but she decided to bring food for him regardless. She went back and forth in her head as to whether she should tell Sherlock about what happened last night in the street, but she dismissed it as an idiot teenage hooligan and nothing more than that. She was just thankful she was okay. Telling him would only make her come across like an even bigger burden. She had only just gotten better from the cold. She decided against telling him, for various reasons.

As soon as she got up the stairs and set the dinner on the table, she proceeded to the curtains and shut them quickly and ran in to the bathroom. In her haste, she did not lock the door. In fact, she did not even close the door as she was home alone. Her arm had been hurting her all day and she had refused to tell anyone, both out of fear of her encounter from the night before and also out of pride. Since birth, Ana was a very quiet girl. She refused to disclose her feuds at school to her parents, which inevitably led to her being homeschooled up until she concluded she had no interest in pursuing education any further and would rather teach herself what needed to be taught. In her mind, schools and universities were mere institutions, which sought to make a profit as opposed to actually instilling knowledge in to the youth as it was intended to be in its humble beginnings. She tried to block out the negative thoughts that often ran amuck in her head by the few positive memories that remained untainted of her family.

Lost in her thoughts of her family and childhood, she unbuttoned her uniform lazily and slid out of the blouse. The tightness of it around her shoulders loosened and she winced as the material retrieved itself from her skin and fell to the rug on the ground. Sliding out of her trousers, she stood in front of the sink in a tank top and her lady briefs admiring her body from the front. She turned to her side and did the same, and then faced her back to the mirror to repeat the process. Ana looked at the scars, shamefully, and tried to make out any progress as to their healing. Amongst the painted scars from her past, a new one began to form on her shoulder and back. It was now a light purple, almost black in some places. It was worse than she had thought. Perhaps she needed to go out and get a few turtlenecks at this rate…or a burkha, knowing her luck.  
  
"Is this all that I'll ever amount to in life? A museum of scars on my already horrible body?" She thought. "Who would love a body like this?"  
  
They weren't going to go away, she knew that, but had a glimmer of hope they would disappear eventually in time. While that part of her life could not easily be erased, it would have made it easy on her if she didn't have to wear these physical trophies to show for her shame. They'd always stain her body for the remainder of her life to remind her of the ordeal she didn't even know why she was put through what she did. Her and her family were good people, how did this happen to them?

"That's a new one."

The voice made Ana jump as she turned around to look at him. Sherlock stood leaned against the door of the bathroom. Ana bent down and began to heave the trousers off the ground and struggle to get it above her knees. She looked up at Sherlock as she tried to do this, noticing that he was holding a small tub of that same aloe based solution he had rubbed on her arms back in the hospital.

"Don't." Lifting his shirt's cuffs up, Sherlock walked over to her as he set down the tub on the counter behind Ana, much to her surprise. She assumed he was going to apply it on her again as he did before, but she was wrong. Suddenly, she felt him wrap his arms around her waist and pulled her in an embrace with him. Ana's jaw dropped open, her hands still holding on to the trousers only just, trembling against his purple satin shirt. With his left hand around her waist, his right hand slowly traced the outline of her body down to meet her hands holding the trousers up. Ana stood stunned, her face buried in his chest, not letting go of the trousers.

"W-what a-are y-…"

Sherlock's right hand intertwined with hers, the other running slowly behind and making its way to her other hand. A small jolt of electricity emitted from him met her fingers, and she pulled away briefly…only to hungrily reach back out to him to hold on tightly as she could. She winced in pain as his lip fell on the fresh bruise on her shoulders. He pulled back immediately, staring at the bruise with his mouth open. Ana took this opportunity to smell his breath. Alcohol.


	7. Recovery

Sunlight seeped in from in between the blinds of the bathroom window, making contact with his eyes, finally waking him up from his humble slumber on the sheepskin rug in the bathroom. 

“Sherlock?”

John stumbled in through the open door of the bathroom, holding his head in his hands with a severely pained expression. Even the minuscule rays of lights were far too much at the moment, due to the excessive drinking the night prior and pounding headache.

“Have you seen Ana?” Sherlock inquired, heaving his body off of the rug while his hands remained on the floor. He stood crouched on the floor for a moment, trying to shake off his own headache. 

“Come to think of it, I haven’t actually. Probably sleeping in today,” John walked over to the toilet quickly and lifted the cover, cowering his head inside with a pale face. He waited until nothing came out of his mouth and turned back to Sherlock, “I am never drinking again.”

“Alas, something we agree —“

Sherlock stood up and stopped in his tracks when he peered over to the ground under the sink. The tub of the aloe solution had fallen, seal opened, on the floor.

“What is it?” John stood up, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. 

“Oh, nothing. Lock up when you leave, John.” 

Grabbing his coat off the ground at the entrance of the bathroom, Sherlock left the living room. Oblivious, John washed himself up and decided it was time to go home to Mary. 

Sherlock carefully climbed the stairs to the bedroom upstairs, holding on to the railing for extra support through the pounding in his head.

"Ana?" Sherlock peered his head in through the bedroom door after waiting for a response from her; his coat in his hand. Against Ana’s knowledge, this was a daily ritual of his as soon as he had woken up because he subconsciously wanted to make sure she was sleeping fine. Prior to today, he would peer in to satisfy his peculiarly confused mind and leave just as quickly.

She was ordinary in every way in his mind except in her bravery and insistence on surviving even through the hardships she had risen above. It was respectable. Pondering over this often, his mind naturally always found itself at the vault within it titled "The Woman." Ana was no match for The Woman. While the latter utilized her intellect and sexuality to climb ladders in the world, the former was a victim of her own femininity and carried an aura of shame about her body. This was something that came as a surprise to Sherlock due to Ana's confidence when he walked in on her in the hospital and she had pressed her bare bosom onto him. Granted, she had been drowning in morphine and all kinds of hospital drugs. Therefore she was aware of her sexuality and she was capable. Yet she was hesitant and ashamed, which was justified.

To Sherlock Holmes, what you did in the world held no importance. Nor did what the world had done to you. The question then could only be what you can make people believe you have done and conquering what has been done to you. Ana could and should, just like everyone else; he was firm in that belief. And she was. After going through something traumatizing the likes of the ordeals which Ana Vincent went through, the average person would do one of the following three: 1.) Succumb to their fears and close their selves off to the world. 2.) Get accustomed to that unhealthy lifestyle they were coerced into in the first place and refuse to leave it out of insecurity or 3.) Carry on like normal, unaffected; but this was in very rare cases when there was something to return to. For Ana, there was nothing. No family. There was a part of him that wanted make her feel comfortable with her past and move past it.

With The Woman, Sherlock had no emotional attachment - despite what anyone said. It was not that silly notion of “love.” It was simply impressive to him to have found someone who wasn’t as dull as the rest of the populace. It was all part of the game to Sherlock Holmes. Now, with Ana, there was a slight feeling of willful obligation beginning to form for him. That’s not to say he saw her as helpless or pathetic that she needed him in that respect, but rather he wanted to see her through it. The tricky part here would be to not formulate an emotional attachment, which would have been easier to avoid had he met Ana a few years ago in his life. After befriending John Watson, however, Sherlock had become accustomed to the idea of individuals and emotional bonds. Accustomed, yet not fully accepting.

He spoke up and knocked again, only to find her hunched into a fetal position on the bed. For a brief moment, an unclear image of Ana standing in his bathroom with her trousers around her ankles flashed in his head. A dream he might have had which was only just surfacing? Although it was very rare for him to have dreams because his daily routine and job exhausted his brain to the core that by the time he slept - if he slept - it would shut down completely. He wasn't quite sure at this point due to the raging headache and alcohol still lingering in his system. Quickly disregarding that, Sherlock snapped back and saw her duvet and bedding had been kicked off from on top and under her, rendering her unaware of the cold in the room. It was that kind of carelessness that had caused her to get sick before, he thought disappointedly.

He shuddered at the sudden hit of the temperature dropping and walked over to the edge of the bed to pick up the satin duvet. Before he even touched her, he felt her body emitting peculiarly high warmth and she was producing an unnatural amount of sweat when considering the low temperature. Her breathing was normal, if not a little strained. Nothing overly concerning, he thought, possibly memories manifesting into dreams. He saw no need to wake her up. He brought the duvet over her shoulders and reached to tuck it in when something struck his immediate attention. He stood, firmly holding on to the collar of her nightgown, slowly pulling it down when he realized what it could be. There was a predominant purple bruise - at least 34 hours old - which had finished forming on her shoulder and on a considerably large area on the nape of her neck. Suddenly, he remembered. He had seen that last night when he wobbled into the bathroom when she was there. Pant-less. Feeling his mouth pry open involuntarily, he stepped back dropping his coat out of his hands. He did not know how to react to that sudden cognizance. Quickly, he picked up the coat and instead of putting it on himself, he brought it over the duvet and set it down on her for the extra warmth. 

There was an armchair that was placed directly under the window and to the side of the bed upon which he fell back, being careful not to make a sound as he did. Much to his disliking momentarily, he sat facing Ana directly. His fingertips of both his hands met under his chin as he attempted to recall the events from last night, which took place in the bathroom between the two. That was most definitely going to be the very first and the very last time he would go drinking with John. Maybe he could try convincing John to shoot some heroin with him instead of going drinking the next time; it was far more thrilling. With heroin, his senses were heightened and his abilities were second next to none. It amplified his intelligence ten folds and the high heroin provided him with was unparalleled. With alcohol, memory loss was imminent and Sherlock was not keen on not knowing. Such as now. 

The sweat around Ana’s cheeks and neck increased from before, but her breathing remained the same. He observed her sat in the chair, eyes focused primarily on her shoulder although it was under his coat and then the duvet. Despite the ongoing storm in his head caused by the alcohol, he was still better able to deduce than he was last night. Sherlock needed problems, he needed work, and he had to be challenged with the most abstruse cryptogram to occupy him otherwise he’d go mad. This is the reason he chose the profession that he did, or rather, created it. 

He pictured her wounded shoulder in his head while he sat comfortably in the armchair with his right leg crossed over his left that remained on the ground. The bruise looked to be 34 hours old, so it happened near midnight after work the night he had called up the restaurant to ask for her whereabouts. He knew something had to have happened, she was always punctual coming home post work even if she was ill. The formation pattern and angle of the bruise hinted it wasn’t self-inflicted but rather came from behind. It also couldn’t have been from a punch or slap, the bruising was far deeper. There were two sharp distinct holes in the very center of the bruise that had peeled skin and flesh off of her; it couldn’t have been fingernails - too tiny and too deep. It would have had to be an instrument of some sort, therefore the attacker preplanned it, therefore it would have had to have been something easily accessible; assuming it was someone hired. It couldn’t have been an act of random violence due to the balance of probability. Attacks on Ana were made before and she was strategically placed in the fireplace. Easily accessible, preplanned, sharp...common garage tool then, ah. Of course. Crowbar. He smirked, although it was one of his slowest deductions he had ever done. The smirk didn’t last for long until he realized he wasn’t as happy about this new addition to his case as he would normally have been. The thought of harm coming to Ana was unpleasant for him, he admitted to himself. And harm was coming her way because someone was surely targeting her, and they knew exactly where she would be. Almost as if they intended for her to end up with Sherlock and John. It had to be Magnussun. Who else would go through the trouble? 

Her breathing stopped and he grew curious, leaning forward in to her face when her eyes opened suddenly, pushing him away just as immediately. 

“Ms. Vincent, I do apologize,” he said, “...the opportunity to deduct was far too darling to miss out on after the night I’ve had.”

It took her a moment to collect her thoughts and realize she was awake and not dreaming this. After the incident last night between him and her…

“It’s...quite alright...deducing what, might I ask?” 

Ana felt the weight of something on top of the duvet and looked to see his coat. How long had he been in here? This was certainly a first. She dragged her body out of the duvet, grabbing the coat and setting it over her shoulders for the warmth. She sat on the bed, face to face with him. Besides the one instance where he had brought Chinese food for the two, this was the closest in proximity to him that she had ever been. Whether this was good or bad, she wasn’t quite sure yet.

“You were attacked lesser than two days ago. Where and why?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember from last night,”

He stopped to recall the events that transpired but it was all blurry except for seeing her with her trousers around her ankles, reaching for them. Had he hurt her somehow or caused her to get hurt? No, the bruise was older than last night. Embarrassed, he asked, “...last night?

“Perhaps if you don’t remember, it’s better left undisclosed,” Ana tugged on the coat more, immersing her upper body completely in to it until only her forehead and nose stuck out. He knew she was doing it to hide her body from him, therefore his blurry visions were not just a figment of his imagination and he did see her in his bathroom.

“I want to know what transpired last night, I seem to have misplaced some events from last night. After the fifth pint, it all became a bit sort of...blurry. Irresponsibly so.”

“I’m kidding. Nothing happened. I did not see you last night nor have any knowledge of when you even got home, Mr. Holmes.”

He looked on to her hands that were now trembling under the coat. Nerves. The nerves are always the first to confirm the suspicion of a person lying. She wasn’t going to tell him.

“You didn’t answer my original question about the attacking, in fact, you changed the topic cunningly. I’m not slow, Ana. Regardless,” he got off the arm chair and started towards the door, “…come downstairs. I’ll have a closer look at the new bruise and as I was about to do last night, put on the aloe solution on your burns.” 

He smiled at her and exited the room. 

When Sherlock had come to the bathroom drunk, something did happen. When he parted his lips from her bruise to speak, a noise came from the living room and stunned both of them. Of course it would be John. In trying to turn around to close the door before John made his way to the bathroom and saw him and Ana in that state, he slipped on the carpet and fell forward on top of her, hitting his head on the sink counter which rendered him unconscious briefly. Ana quickly crawled out from under him, sliding in to her trousers and running upstairs, knocking over the tub of aloe solution to the ground. John watched her run up and came to find Sherlock sleeping on the ground. Or what looked like sleeping. He assumed that Sherlock would have simply passed out on there and Ana…well, Ana wasn’t much of a conversationalist to begin with so her reaction was not suspicious to John in the slightest. Within minutes, John had passed out to sleep on the sofa in the living room.

All of Ana’s clothes were dirty and frankly, she was too tired to change out of the also filthy clothes she had slept in. She was unable to get much sleep last night due to the incident between Sherlock and her. She wondered whether he remembered the kiss or was it just the bruise that he recognized. 

Forcing her body out of the bedroom, she dragged her feet along the cold hardwood floor with Sherlock’s coat wrapped all around her body. When she got downstairs, she was surprised not to find John around. What time was it? The sun had disappeared, darkening the rooms more so than they usually would be. 

Sherlock was in the kitchen, dashing around making a concoction of some sorts that she could smell from all the way where she stood by the computer. She sat on the chair against the window, picking up her feet off the ground and tucking them under the coat in an attempt to warm them up. 

Sherlock came out of the kitchen holding a plain white mug, hesitantly bringing it to his mouth and sticking his tongue in very cautiously. He made a wincing face before he closed his eyes and drank the liquid, making his way on the arm chair with the Union Jack cushion. 

Ana took off the coat and before she could get up to give it to him, he spoke.

“You’ll catch a cold again. Keep the coat momentarily,” 

She sank bank in to the chair comfortably.

“A Victorian era medicine to ease chronic head pains and detox the body of the alcohol,” he said as he sipped on the mug more confidently than before. “Putrid but effective.”

He finished and rose from his chair, leaving the mug on the side table. Ana sat quietly; nearly half asleep. The numbness in her shoulder had faded now but an occasional pain remained every time she moved that side of her body. A sharp, shooting pain. She watched as Sherlock walked in and out of the bathroom, then next to her chair as she looked up at him. He took the coat off her back and placed it on her front, covering her breasts and knees which were tucked in to her chest. His fingers touched her back, pulling her cotton shirt up a little before he stopped when he saw goose-bumps begin to form and her body suddenly cowering. 

He stopped.

“May I?” 

Ana pulled the coat closer to her face to cover her expressions, and leaned forward a bit more to allow him to lift up the back of her shirt. He continued until it was placed right above her shoulders. Thankfully the material was rayon and stretchy, so she would not have to take the entire shirt off.

 

“Why you didn’t tell John or Mary about the attack, I understand. You don’t want to be emotionally dependent or grow unnecessarily close to people. I understand. But you are my client. Mine. I have to be made aware of these things, Ana.”

Sherlock held on to her back with his left hand, the right one reached for the tub of Aloe Vera solution. She could feel his thumb twitching against her skin, almost as if he was just as nervous as she was. 

“There’s been no progress made on this case due to the fragility of it,” he went on while he took his middle finger and started to apply the Aloe Vera solution on the burn marks on her lower back, “…every little thing matters. Every little thing down to the fabric that your attacker wore. Had you told me that night you were attacked, I could have gone to the scene myself and try to gather whatever I could have, anything. But I can’t now because it’s not…fresh anymore.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think anything of it, I thought maybe it was someone drunk, just a hoodlum,” Ana buried her eyes in to her coat to prevent him from seeing her eyes well up. 

“Far from it. It was preplanned, however unprofessional the job. Feel this…”

He pressed on her skin where two marks from the crowbar were residing, and she winced in pain. 

“This is hurting you because you were hit with a crowbar which are usually made from carbon steel nowadays but some continue to be made from iron and other cheap, unrefined and hazardous materials as they used to be in England prior to the industrial age. You were hit here by one of those very few. It had to have been an old one, one that’s probably been in the attacker’s family for a few generations as there is rust residue within your scar which was left behind from the impact of the crowbar against your flesh,” 

“The rust from the crowbar found it’s way in to your blood stream, Ana.”  
 “Is that good or bad?”

“Worst case scenario, tetanus.”

She immediately turned around to him and he saw her eyes had become bloodshot red from trying to keep her eyes open for a long time in order to keep herself from crying. He held her shirt up in place as he continued to apply the Aloe Vera on her shoulder and back. Ana noted how his expression stayed the same; serious. 

“Best case scenario, just an infection on your skin which is what you have. I’ll go to the hospital and grab some antibacterial for it tonight before it has a chance to develop in to a bacteria infection.” 

She breathed a sigh of relief and allowed for him to carry on with her back. Within a few seconds, he had finished and put her shirt back down.

“Face me,” he said as softly as he could, careful not to be aggressive about it and trigger traumatic memories to surface. Ana was a victim of consecutive rape and she was still recovering, he had to be careful in how he worded and sounded to her. He never cared how he came across to people normally but she was prone to anxiety and he did not want to be a cause of it. 

Something about the way he said that sounded paternal, almost like how older male doctors would. She obliged, to her own surprise. She was getting too comfortable with him for her own liking. Holding on to the coat with her left arm, she stretched out the right to the side for him.

“They’re healing at a very quick pace,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice, as he finished one arm and went on to the other. 

“I apologize for last night. I don’t know what overcame me.”  
“It’s okay. It was only a peck and you were drunk. I was a bit stunned but it’s okay. I…I’m beginning to trust you.”

She was unable to see his expression as she said this. A kiss? He was oblivious to this until now. The thought had not even crossed his mind. He stammered, struggling to formulate an adequate response. Ana heard this and stood up to face him. His face shone a bright pink, and his lips were parted in embarrassment and surprise. 

“Oh. You didn’t…know…”

“No, I didn’t. Where?”

“You saw the bruise on my shoulder and you kissed it…before you tripped and fell unconscious anyways,” she pulled the sleeves of her shirt, covering her shoulders up uncomfortably while trying not to make eye contact with him. He walked over to her and leaned forward, planting a kiss on her cheeks. He was just as surprised at himself as she was.

Before she could say anything, he took his coat off of her and began to put it on himself while continuing to speak.

“Put a coat on. Come to the hospital with me, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

 

—

“This is who you wanted me to meet?”

The two stood on top of the corpse of an old man, with Sherlock looking as excited as a child in a candy store. He retrieved a magnifying glass from his coat pocket and carefully continued to study the body that had burn marks around the chest area and two bullet wounds dead center of the chest.

“Are you aware of who Doctor Besley was?”

“No. Who was he?”

“Dr. Stephen Besley was a prison physician. In the 1930’s, an idea came to him. He figured that since inmates were being executed for their crimes anyways, science might as well benefit from the event of their death. One experimental endeavor of his was to monitory inmates’ heart rates when faced with fear and death.”

“Is that an inmate?”

“How did you know?

“Number tattoo behind his ear, and that his wrists and ankles have a lot of bruising…you said that indicated that there were chains involved, right? When you looked at mine…I just assumed…”

“Correct. Matthew Goode, two life sentences for double homicide and robbery,” he placed the magnifying glass back in to his coat pocket. “As I was saying, Dr. Besley took an inmate by the name of John Deering and had him strapped and shot at. His heart rate went up to nearly 200 beats per minute before Goode passed away 15.5 seconds immediately after the first bullet made contact with his heart.”

“Is that what’s happened here?”

“Precisely. Someone is carrying out the experiments decades later. I’m waiting for the bullets to be analyzed and returned.”

“In case there’s a chance there’s finger prints on it.”

Ana’s accent had changed significantly since she had been living here. Her undertones of an American accent were almost completely dissipated, and her English had improved as well. Today was the first time he was noticing this. And her lips. 

“Yes. Yes. Finger prints.”

He was jumping all over the morgue, looking at other bodies with the same tattoos, chain bruises and bullet wounds. This was the first time she was seeing him in his “office.” 

The two turned around in unison as the door flung open and a woman in a lab coat and scrubs walked in to the room. She was rather pale, far more than Ana was. Her light brown, almost blonde hair was pulled tightly back in to a bun and she had on massive goggles.

“Ana, this is Molly. Molly Hooper.” With that, Sherlock went back to examining the bodies.

“Hi!” She reached her hand out, smiling and Ana returned the favor. The two shook hands and gathered around Matthew’s corpse with Sherlock.

“Ana, I wanted you to meet Molly. It would be nice for you to have a friend of the same sex to be with when I am working and you’re not working. I can tell you’re getting antsy and annoyed being cooped up in the house for the past month,” he said. “Color your hair before you head out like I advised. Something light.”

“No.”

“No?” He looked up from the body.

“My mother loved it. I can’t do that.”

He simply smiled and she didn’t know why. 

Sherlock was proud of her for standing up to him. He hadn’t suggested for her to cut her hair out of fear of getting caught harboring a fugitive but instead, he wanted for her to muster the courage to stand up for her beliefs. It was one of the first small steps that was crucial for her to take before she set out to recover from the months of emotional and physical abuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some easter eggs in this chapter as I have not had the chance to update within the last month. Because I haven't updated in a month, I've made the chapter super long for you. This is intact the longest chapter I've done, totalling up to 4,300 words! See if you can spot the Easter eggs. ;)


	8. A Matter of Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly has some seriously poor timing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lost my passwords and simply did not have the time to update. I truly apologize for that. I will be finishing this, in one way or another, and make more of an effort to update often. I'm aiming for one chapter each 1-2 weeks. Thank you for holding on if you have been waiting for years/months/weeks. I'm so sorry I got so entangled with life & forgot all about you guys.

Billy Joel's Matter of Trust played quietly through Ana's headphones. She looked down at her sweaty right hand, clenching a small MP3 player, rewinding the track every few seconds to the same lines as she stared out the window which had now been covered in snow. Work had been draining on it's own and her disconnect with Sherlock, which was now more obvious than ever due to both of theirs work schedule, made being in his presence such as right now very uncomfortable. They both rarely saw each other over the last few weeks, and not either of them vocalized their qualms about their situation. There was one other thing that made the air between them tense, one which Sherlock never told Ana, not even after catching him in the act. With Christmas approaching, more and more of the wait staff started taking days off and giving their shifts to Ana - or rather, to Rose Tylor, Ana's new identity to which she had learned to respond to. Without arguing, knowing that they knew she had nothing else to do and to say she did would be out of the ordinary, she accepted their shifts with a nod. Only a few days ago, when a customer remarked on seeing her there all the time, did she notice she had worked up to 143 hours out of the 168 in a week. Call it a self fulfilling prophecy, call it coincidence, but as she did the math, she realized how truly exhausted she was and in need of a break. She had now saved up more money than most people her age and with no real necessity to spend the money she was making (such as on rent, tuition or mortgage), she decided it best that she would take the upcoming week off to herself to get refreshed. Mr. Rafiq, the aged owner of the restaurant, had long since been concerned about her and voiced that concern on many occasions. He would surely be glad she had asked for this, she thought. He had assured her that the job would be waiting for her even if she came back years later, and that he had never seen someone as hard of a worker as her.

As she shifted her eyes to the mantle above the fireplace, she took in the beautifully binded books that often caught her eye. They were mostly scientific books, and books on law and psychology; all of which she did not have the patience for. She loved fantasy and being in her head. It had been a long time since she went to a book store, sat down with some tea and finished a book. Nothing was more satisfying than finishing a good book. Perhaps maybe writing one is better, she thought. Maybe when all of this over, I can write a book. What books were even out? She hadn't gone in to a book store in over six years. When Molly heard this, she offered to take Ana to the biggest bookstore in London which was conveniently located within the shopping mall in central London. Molly had been pestering her to go shopping with her there, as she had yet to buy Christmas presents for everyone - excluding Sherlock, for she once bought him something and it went horribly wrong, or so she told Ana, not wanting to talk about it in detail out of evident embarrassment. Molly was led to believe by Sherlock that Ana was Sherlock's friend from university from when he did a semester abroad, hence Ana's accent, who was staying with him until she had settled. Molly knew nothing of who Ana was and why she minimally left her neighbourhood, neither did Ana want her to think she was introverted to the point of being inept at socializing, so Ana always said she had plans however, when Molly mentioned the bookstore, Ana was enticed. She Google'd the name of the bookstore, as Molly had recommended she do to see if something caught her fancy. And one did. Scrolling through the online catalogue through John's laptop, she came upon The Song of Achilles which was on sale currently. It's synopsis resonated in her mind. She had always been fond of the Ancient Greeks, and of the heroes of their time when she was a child. Now though...now, she stopped believing in the novelty of their heroes, but became fascinated with the tragedies that followed them in each poem. How fitting, the same voice inside her spoke. For someone like you.

It seemed it hadn't stopped snowing for the entirety of the week now.

Her fingers fiddled with the left arm of the chair she sat on as they almost always did, a habit Sherlock had grown weary of and told her to stop on numerous occasions; something which she found him also doing but she never vocalized the notable hypocrisy, only internalized it and got agitated with him for it. She couldn't control it. In Thailand, down in the basements and empty rooms, she would be forced to spend weeks at a time without seeing daylight or having anything to do. The only form of entertainment readily available to her was to pick at the splinters of the battered - far less battered than her - furniture, the walls, the doors. Anything to keep her mind occupied, to pass the time but more importantly, to stop trying to feel the bruises that were inflicted on her often. With a bleeding back, and a vagina that dripped with not only blood but liquids she didn't even recognize, she refused to look at her body. She'd often fetch the blindfolds they left inside of her, or if she was lucky, on the floor to prevent herself from having to look at herself. As if blindfolds stopped the screaming that come from all around her and fixed anything.

Shaking off the thoughts with a shiver, trying to convince herself she would never have to go back, her mind waltzed to winters back home with her family. While autumn and winter made people lazier, it regulated her sleeping habits and made her all the more active. Her mother thought it had something to do with her eyes, the color of the dreary grey winter sky with strategically placed sparkles to represent the snow. Her mother was strange like so, and Ana adored her. As soon as she found herself thinking of her mother, she stopped herself. What good could come of thinking of the dead? She couldn't help them then, and she can't help them now. She started thinking of her brother again, if he was even alive.

_  
_

"I know you're an emotional girl,

And it took a lot for you to not lose your faith in this world,

I can't offer you proof,

But you're going to face a moment of truth..."

Ana still sat on the sofa, staring absent-mindedly at the curly haired stranger in front of her while listening to the song, taking in each syllable. She looked at his pink slippers, finding amusement in them. He snapped back, claiming that they were John's when she tried to compliment him on them, but she knew they weren't John's. Probably an ex-lover who left them behind? But the shoes fit him perfectly. That would have had to have been a very big footed lover.

She had never liked music much, however, over the last month or so, she decided on the strangest of impulse buys - an MP3 player, something that was quite hard to find in this age of iPhones. Her work often looped the same Billie Joel albums and A Matter of Trust adorned her ears daily, and she grew to love it. With Sherlock and her not talking, as if they had ever actually talked at all (properly talked), the MP3 player provided a comfort for her to hide from the silence and her cruel mind.

Sherlock rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, fiddling with various culinary instruments and oddly placed chemistry tools all over the kitchen. It must not be easy for him, Ana thought, sharing his personal space with someone. Someone like her. When he caught her looking at him, Ana didn't turn away like any other person would out of embarrassment. She continued to look at him, not even realizing he had his own shy gaze fixed on her. When she finally realized he was returning the gesture, she feigned half a smiled at him. It was unfair, she thought. He was able to deduce everything about her each time he looked at her but when she did so, nothing. He knew what she had eaten that day, the intricacy of her face cleansing routine and the products used, even the town which she stayed in when she was ten for six months - that too, simply by how the muscles in her face reacted to a documentary he had once found her watching. He was unlike anyone she had encountered. He was a closed book yet she was enticed by his binding.

As she smiled, he noticed her eyes squinted in harmony to the barely visible dimples that formed around the corners of her cheeks. Finding himself staring at her for perhaps far too long, he turned away and started walking towards the fridge - acting completely upon impulse, surprising himself. Ana looked away, disheartened that he lacked the courtesy to smile back at the very least, not yet having realized his intentions. The disheartened feeling did not last long, however, as Ana watched the curly haired stranger pace towards Ana's most favourite pass time of theirs - one that they rarely partook in these days because, again, their differing schedules so Sherlock one morning had made another solution for her and left it on the dresser for her to apply on herself. But she liked when he did it, and he hadn't in very long. He reached, utmost effortlessly due to his height, to the top of it and grabbed the aloe burn solution. Over the last three months, Ana's burn marks on her arm had nearly healed, and began to scar. There were a few stubborn ones here and there which refused to even form a scab let alone dissipate but Ana was to blame for that. When she got nervous, or even in her sleep as she slept through ghoulish things her mind conjured, she often took one or the other arm and scratched at it furiously. There were mornings where she'd wake up to find her own blood on her forearms, with skin under the fingernails she didn't realize was there until Sherlock asked about it. On those days, a good portion of her morning routine was taken up by her trying to clean her blood stained finger nails and cuticles.

"Arm." Sherlock stood behind Ana, with the cuffs of his purple satin dress shirt rolled up to his sleeves, patiently waiting for her. To anyone else, with the exception of perhaps Watson, that request would have sounded aggressive. To Ana, Sherlock's rigid mannerism was not only admirable but also a mould for what she wanted her own persona to exemplify. It would be a beautiful thing, in Ana's mind, to be devoid of pathos - a term she had learned from her many books on Greek mythology and tragedy. If she were devoid of this, Magnussun would not have been alive today and she would surely be with her brother. Surely.

Ana carefully unbuttoned her burgundy cotton blouse, making to to hold on to the collars with one hand to ensure the shirt would not slip off as it was quite loose. Alas, beggars can not always be choosers as most of the shirts Ana wore everyday were donated by Molly, Mary and Mrs. Hudson. This blouse in particular was one given by soon to be Mrs. Watson, whose figure was far fuller than that of Ana's in that Ana was significantly shorter than Mary, but also far more fragile looking which she did not like.

Ana leaned over, nails digging in to the collars of the shirt still and dug her face in to her lap as she felt him lather the aloe solution on her back cautiously. She stared at her feet, one of the few places on her body that had not been scarred yet had blisters from being on her feet for so many hours a day, working until her legs collapsed but they never did. She'd been forced to stand for longer than that.

She felt him trace the scars on her back, applying the gel with hope that it would disappear. He insisted it would, and did not know whether he would say it for her sake or to be optimistic for his own trust in his concoction. The burn marks did, of course, heal but the scars on the back only opened with each brand new day in ways more than one.

At the back of her mind, she still felt like a burden no matter how much assurance John and Sherlock provided her with. To be quite honest, every time Ana was "home," as rare as that was, she would get overwhelmed by the domesticity of it all even if it was brief. With Sherlock and John normally at work, she found herself carrying out day to day tasks with Mrs. Hudson or with Mary. Buying the groceries, doing the laundry, cooking dinner. It was all too…civilian like, especially after considering the dark places Ana had seen and the people she had encountered. John would often say how alike they are, how they've both seen those dark places and "combat," as he had called it once. While he was a soldier, and not to dismiss his achievements as one, she didn't think it was the same at all. Not in the least. John chose that life. Ana didn't. She never pointed it out but she knew Mary understood it wasn't in the same league as she would shoot darts with her eyes to him and he'd stop mid-sentence. The thoughts of the dark places engulfed Ana, but the need to find closure in the form of her brother was more than her hatred for what was done to her. It was all the more frustrating because Sherlock had not pursued her attacker in the alley, as there was very little trace left. Or so she was told by him.

She realized Sherlock had stopped applying the solution but still stood behind her for some reason. Ana leaned back in to the chair, looking up at him with her head tossed back. She buttoned up the shirt coyly, pulling it up to cover her chest and neck. After she was done, she stood up and and turned to face Sherlock. He was leaning on the window sill behind the sofa, legs stretched out and crossed across the hardwood floor, holding his forehead as if he had a headache. Perhaps from the lack of nicotine, since he had attempted to cut back on it - albeit not quite all that successfully. Every once in a while, Ana would hear doors slamming and the banging of furniture that Sherlock would toss in search for cigarettes. It was scary. On such occasions, Ana either stayed upstairs in her bedroom or would take on another shift at work. Sherlock never did this in her presence and John assured her he wasn't a violent person in that matter. In fact, it was comedic to John. John didn't tell her about Sherlock's heroin addiction, however, and she came to learn about that on her own when she accidentally walked in on Sherlock in their shared bathroom. Sherlock had locked the door on her after telling her it was out of character for him to do so, and she had told John the following day, leaving him to speak to Sherlock. Since then, the topic was not talked about and Sherlock's tossing of furniture had ceased.

Could he be using again?

"Are you okay?" She asked, hesitantly approaching him. He looked to be about ready to faint.

"Just a case I'm working on," he replied back, rubbing his temples back and forth and sighing in frustration.

This was the first time she had ever heard him express frustration regarding anything, now that she thought about it. Sherlock maintained a rather unnaturally cold demeanour at all times.

He looked up at her, with a rough bite of his lip.

"What case? Are you still on the Hollow...?"

"May I kiss you?" he suddenly asked, unconsciously inching closer to Ana.

Ana thought she either misheard what he'd said and that it was a name for a case of his, about to shrug it off and continue until she saw him get closer, surprised at his persistence even still after the confusing, awkward few weeks they had.

"I have this unfathomable, utterly absurd urge —"

Her first instinct was to step back, not knowing whether it was a prank or not.

The door flung open and Molly uninvitedly propped herself inside, shaking off the cold and snow. She refused to take off her coat while shivering in her seemingly new thigh high boots. Sherlock withdrew from Ana's proximity instantly upon seeing Molly. Unfortunately, Ana did the opposite. Not knowing who it was and perhaps being scared by the sudden noise that came from behind, Ana instinctively stepped forward towards Sherlock, anticipating him to be there to embrace her if the need be as she noted he had stepped closer to her. Reaching out and failing to realize that he had already withdrawn, she found her arms greet the air between them as Sherlock pushed past her towards the kitchen counter where he placed the tub of solution and pretended to look busy so Molly wouldn't suspect anything; which she hasn't, as she was more concerned with the snow that had collected in the hood of her coat.

"Chop chop, Ana!" Molly's voice echoed loudly through the eerily silent living room, something that she did not think oddly of as she did not see Ana as much of a talker anyways. She did find Sherlock's behaviour odd, more so than usual. For one, he looked unoccupied and almost bored, a feat that wasn't his, standing by the kitchen counter as he tapped his left foot on the floor. "Planning to go somewhere, Sherlock?"

"Who, me? Oh, yes, a date with the cadaverously. You know, the habitual," Sherlock walked over to Molly, pushing past her to grab his coat. When he neared, Molly noticed he had begun to sweat profusely. You'd think he'd stepped out of a sauna seconds ago.

Ana fixed her posture as Molly was occupied with Sherlock, collecting her thoughts. She already knew Sherlock had no plans today.

As Sherlock rushed out the door, he only just realized Molly and Ana had planned to go to the shopping mall today. It was unlike him to forget such a thing. He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, twice. Once for the headache that had started to envelope the left side of his brain due to the longevity of his abstinence from nicotine and other...hobbies, and one for making the mistake of trying to pursue anything with Ana as it had failed terribly once and she should have taken it as a sign of sorts.

Ana had asked Molly to drop by since she did not want to go to Central London alone and because if she did go alone, she would have to take public transport whereas Molly, being one of the few lunatics that dared to own a car in London, would simply drive both of them in the off chance they bought quite a few things in which case they would be able to easily transport the things back home without getting snow on them.

Sherlock treaded down the stairs as fast as his feet would allow, not realizing his wallet was upstairs on the kitchen countertop and he had not even changed out of his (John's) slippers in to his dress shoes until he reached Mrs. Hudson's front door. With no real plans, and no true will to face the snowy wonderland outside due to how lazy the cold made him, Sherlock knocked on Mrs. Hudson's door, invited himself in before she spoke, and waited there for Ana and Molly to leave so he could go back upstairs and pretend what just happened, didn't happen.

Ana walked down the stairs in a confused daze as to what transpired upstairs, with Sherlock's wallet in her hand. Molly told her to wait inside as she started and heated the car, having left it outside for so long while they decided to relax for a little bit upstairs and have some tea as Ana got dressed listening to Molly vent about work and the stresses of the first world - more specifically, men. As Ana waited inside, she looked at Sherlock's wallet, not knowing whether to be happy or sad or anything in between. She wasn't at all incapable of taking social cues, as Sherlock often was, she simply chose to ignore them. She had been in relationships before and had been familiar with the innocence of men at one point in her life. It wasn't the first time Sherlock had tried to kiss her but she hoped it would be the last. It wasn't because it made her uncomfortable, the idea of kissing or the idea of sex; it was because she feared that she would like it after spending so long dispelling her physical desires and learning to hate her reproductive organs. As she should. She wasn't sure she'd be capable of enjoying the act of sex, or any type of future relationship for that matter. Not now, not ever. And no man would enjoy it with her.

Ana's phone suddenly vibrated from a text from Molly, telling her to come outside now. Ana walked over to Mrs. Hudson's, rung the doorbell and left Sherlock's wallet on the floor before running out the front door and getting in the car. Mrs. Hudson opened the door, exclaiming that there was a wallet on the front door. Sherlock, now fashioning a red and white Santa hat, looked on as his face turned pink in embarrassment. More in embarrassment from Ana finding his wallet than from standing there in his pink slippers and one of Mrs. Hudson's many pyjamas he'd trudged through her closet for.


	9. Withdrawals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heroin withdrawals haunt Sherlock.

Sherlock had decided he would no longer pursue Ana. It was not appropriate on his part, Mary had advised him, and it was not fair for her. The last thing he wanted was for Ana to believe she owed anything to him for letting her live with him, and for her to see him as just another man out of extort something from her. To be perfectly honest, he had busied himself with cases because his inapproriate, inconvenient feelings for Ana made it hard for him to be around her. In a very long time, where women were concerned, he was lost as to what he should do versus what he wanted to do.

Mrs. Hudson's bathroom was small, far smaller than his own. In fact, her entire allotment was far inferior in size than his own. She insisted it was because she had no need for more space, with no husband or children to accommodate. Her sister rarely visited, now aged and worryingly sickly.

Sherlock took in the black and gold damask wallpaper surrounding him as he towered over the basin, topless, already having put on his dress pants. He took off the pyjama top he had briefly borrowed, slipping on the purple satin shirt and proceeding to find the button holes.

He stopped midway, his finger tips beginning to tremble. He let go of the buttons, trying to find the closet object.

Sweat started to break out around his temples, followed by veins throbbing. He held tightly on to the basin countertop, throwing his head forward to meet the tap in sudden agony. The countertop shook in his hand as his grip got tighter around the edges. Sherlock's abdomen was on fire, his eyes refused to open. Abdominal pain was one of the symptoms of withdrawal, one which Sherlock had come to be too familiar with.

His breathing grew strained and remained as such for the next fifteen minutes. He retreated to his mind palace, his safe zone, waiting for it all to pass. He visualized the needle being inserted in to his arm, trying to trick his body in surrendering control to him. While the high was astonishing, the withdrawal symptoms were a nuisance. Now more than ever.

When it had passed, he found himself occupying a place on the ground of the floor, his shirt covered in sweat and his legs stretch across the entire span of the bathroom.

A knock on the door shook him off the floor and back to his feet, dusting himself off and continuing to button his shirt while looking at his flushed face in the mirror. The sweat desperately clung to the bags that begun to form under his eyes in a matter of minutes.

"Dear, I really would appreciate it if you took care of your personal business in your bathroom and not mine!"

Sherlock chuckled at Mrs. Hudson's explicit imagination, opening the door to face her.

"Rest assured, that bathroom is far too minuscule for me to do anything in, let alone myself."

"Sherlock!"

"Is that not what you were insinuating?"

"Behave!"

"That wasn't what you were instructing Mr. Rafiq to do merely a few nights ago."

Her face turned red and she softly hit his shoulder to prompt him to cease, only then taking in the dampness of the shirt from his sweat. Her expression changed to that of concern, much to Sherlock's dismay, knowing the kinds of inquiry that usually followed in this state of his. On cue, Mrs. Hudson grabbed his forehead, trying to take his temperature.

"Are you alright, dear?"

"Exceptional," He smiled, pulling his forehead away and walking past her to the dining room. He pulled a seat, but before doing so, cracked open the window next to to the table only an inch or less to refrain from losing too much heating in the flat. After a few minutes of mitigating his temperature and reducing his sweating, he closed it.

"Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said softly, barely a whisper. Sherlock fiddled with the phone in his dress pant pocket.

"You'd tell me if you were using again, wouldn't you?"

He replied with silence, hands placed on the arms of the wooden chair. Unconsciously, he began to pull at the splinters of the wood, much like Ana did. Mrs. Hudson noticed it right away, as she would often find Ana doing the same to the chair. Had it been a habit Sherlock picked up from Ana, or a habit Ana picked up from Sherlock? Mrs. Hudson opened the oven, removing the gingerbread cookies and set them in front of Sherlock who was unmoved.

The dining table faced the damp red bricks of the flats next to theirs. With not much of a view to admire, he wandered off, allowing for the sweat to dissipate and his stomach cramps to recede some more.

He never partook in his undesirable hobbies at home and preferred to inject himself in more appropriate locations such as crack houses, amongst addicts like him. He did so not only out of respect for the people around him, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson and most importantly John, but more than that, he did so for himself. He wasn't like other junkies. This wasn't him. At least, it was but it wasn't all he was. It was a fraction of who he was. His personality didn't depend upon it, he wasn't defined by his indulgence nor did he want to be. When he came home, he didn't want to be regarded as one of them and by keeping his home cleansed of the equipment necessary to partake, he was able to keep it from becoming all of him. It heightened his senses, which made him solve cases quicker, with more efficiency than without it. Some cases were easy and didn't require his indulgence, others; not so much.

With Ana's case, he had come to a halt. Professionally, physically, emotionally. This was an unfamiliar territory he had never before encountered. It was one that required his brother's assistance but Sherlock's pride was far too much to ask him for it. He was also aware of the precarious position it left Mycroft in, what with him practically being the head of security of the nation. Magnussun, had he came to know of Mycroft's involvement, would surely attempt to exploit it and do what he had done with Ana's family. She had no recollection of her assailant, and he had recovered no physical proof from where it happened. There were no CCTV cameras around in that part of the neighbourhood, as it was unusual for incidences to happen there.

To add to the frustration, the gypsy, admittedly, had shaken Sherlock quite a bit. He assured Ana it were mere tricks and gags, more aimed to cause stress on him than her. Ana believed him, but he didn't quite believe himself anymore. Every time he left the home, every dark haired, black eyed man he encountered resembled Moriarty. Of course, he know Moriarty couldn't be alive, he saw him kill himself. It was not only impossible, but completely improbable. He preached the very opposite to John but on this occasion, he made an exception. Nobody could have survived that. Not even Moriarty.

So Sherlock turned to what he normally would have in hard cases like this. Heroin. He kept small quantities of it scattered all through out the apartment, under hidden compartments behind cabinets and behind bricks of the fireplace that they never used for they had central heating if they required it. He paid individuals to come in, hiding the heroin from him in places he didn't know. He'd treat it as a game when he got bored, and almost always retraced their steps and found the heroin. He never found it to consume it, however. He'd place it back or hide it better.

He kept his usage minimal, his dosage meagre. His consumption of it was far lesser than normal in the off chance Ana was home from work early or did not go to. There very very few individuals left in his life who did not know of his addiction, and all of them lost respect for him when they found out. They would never admit it, but they did. It was in the glares they gave him, the lectures upon figuring it out and the patronizing behaviour towards him that followed. They didn't understand why he did it, and Sherlock didn't understand why they feared it. He understood their concern of him overdosing but they also knew he was smarter than that, smarter than the average addict, and he saw it as if it was insulting that they would not give him the benefit of the doubt.

With Ana living with him, he tried his hardest to keep that secret in fear of being looked at in the same manner. It was a personal low for him when he lost track of time and Ana walked in on him. Ana was kind enough to not bring the matter up again, and Sherlock rid the house of the heroin he hid; not in shame, but because he didn't want her to see him differently like everyone did after finding out. He hadn't since turned to it, but it was calling to him. The sudden sweats, migraines and stomach aches were happening far too much and it started impacted the cases he was working.

Sherlock now sat adjacent to Mrs. Hudson, looking at the white screen of his phone, perhaps in anticipation of a text. His stomach still hurt, now even making noises. He reached for the cookies, surprised at how good they tasted and reached for another.

She was struggling to navigate the electronic device in front of her, an iPad. Sherlock rolled his eyes at her far too many times when asked to show her to do the simplest things like copy and pasting, so he refrained from doing it again in fear of having his eyes fall out at the lethargic nature of it. Instead, much like a child, he huffed in discontent which Mrs. Hudson took offence to. Sherlock reached for another gingerbread cookie placed in front of him, upon which Mrs. Hudson rightfully seized the opportunity and slapped the back of his hand away.

"I've got other guests I'm expecting, you know, leave some for them!"

With her aged first generation iPad that Sherlock had gifted her in one hand, she stood up and took the tray of the curiously shaped cookies in the other. Sherlock looked on in annoyance. He hadn't taken more than 3.

He looked her up and down, dressed far more formally than normal. Her perfume was applied abundantly, her hair done in an up do. Likely awaiting a man, for whom the cookies were intended for. He took this as his cue to leave, stealing a Christmas stocking shaped cookie while she wasn't looking. He held on to his cramping stomach as he ascended the stairs in the same slippers.

The phone vibrated. He stopped in his tracks, looking at the phone debating whether he should go or not.

"Central LDN mall. 10g. Bring cash.

\- IG."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write about Sherlock's heroin addiction and explore about it in more depth than they did in the show. While uncharacterlike, I really wanted to humanize him in some ways, especially in chapters that are based around his point of view. I really like stories where we see things through everyone's point of views, and not just one person's so expect those kind of chapters in the future. I also wanted to say, I am not following the same timeline as the show. I've added more months in between certain events, to allow for more character development and because...I can, lol. I hope you enjoyed =)


	10. Silent Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An peaceful shopping trip. Just kidding.

The wet soles of their shoes squeaked in unison as they tread quickly down the tiled floors of the crowded shopping mall, forcefully pushing past herds of individuals out doing their Christmas shoppings for the holiday was a mere days away. Ana grew impatient as Molly stopped at nearly every other shop and they still had not yet reached the book store that she promised Ana to. Recognizing the look of disapproval on Ana's face, Molly offered for her to try the new, high-tech hydro massage chairs right outside the shop that she was going to go in next. She assured Ana that it would not take longer than a few minutes but Ana doubted that very much. With a fleeting interest in what Molly had to buy, Ana opted for the chairs where aged aunties and uncles sat comfortably, waiting for their children and grandchildren to return to tend to them.

Mycroft's visits to Sherlock's flat started to become regular ever since the incident Sherlock had told her about. According to Sherlock, Ana had fallen asleep one day and made a noise that Mycroft surely heard. This was also a factor in pushing Ana to work more hours and stay out of the house as much as she could. There were nights where she slept in the booths of the restaurant. She would be in charge of closing the till and locking up on her own on some nights, having gained Mr. Rafiq's trust more than other employees under him. If she had a shift the following morning that required her to open the till, she would simply sleep in the seating booths at the back, making sure to be awake long before the opening.

With Sherlock occupied with his cases late in to the night himself and often not returning until the morning, this carried on unbeknownst to his knowledge until Mycroft visited quite early one morning and curiously stated that one of the female employees in the restaurant next to his flat was always working there which Sherlock vehemently denied ever noticing for he rarely ate there.

When Mycroft left the flat temporarily after receiving a call, Sherlock took the opportunity to grab his coat and go outside to the restaurant. He hovered around the window, trying to locate Ana inside, but the darkness was all that engulfed the inside. His eyes moved across the darkness of the room until he could make out the long, dark hair hanging off of the booths in the back. Her hair had grown considerably since they first met in January. Nearly a year had passed now.

He couldn't see her face or body for the booth faced the kitchen at the back but he could see that she used her coat, the very one with the hole in the pockets she wore that had gotten her sick not long after.

Sherlock was tempted to pick at the lock and reached in his coat pocket to find the tools to do so immediately because he knew how futile the coat was in preventing the cold in the dead of winter. Before doing so, he thought it best to run home and quickly grab the thick, warm faux fur throw on his sofa in the living room to drape it over her. If he woke her up and offered it, she would surely refuse so Sherlock believed doing it while she slept, when she could not refuse being given something, would be best. He also did not want to disrupt their silent truce of keeping to themselves after not only him trying to kiss her in the bathroom, but her walking in on him "indulging" himself soon after. Also another factor in their lack of communication over the last few weeks, one which Sherlock was particularly ashamed about and lead him to actively ignore Ana to save face.

No sooner than he had come back upstairs to his flat and tried to grab the throw that Mycroft had returned, holding cups of coffee for the two of them with the most sadistic grin on his face.

"I miss Redbeard, too." Mycroft said, seating himself comfortably on the sofa merely inches away from the faux fur throw. Sherlock had inevitably tried to make himself occupied, not wanting to entertain the idea that Mycroft knew. All he could think of was curious, cold Ana.

Sherlock insisted to Ana that it was merely a coincidence. His brother's constant presence, that is. She would have believed him had he not said that Mycroft paid him visits often, as John had stated otherwise once in a faraway joke regarding the nature of Mycroft's job and the easy access he had at means of surveillance, which would render his visits obselete. As a result, the bedroom Ana occupied was kept orderly and masculine as it was before she had occupied it. This was done so Mycroft would not be able to know Sherlock was harbouring her. Although if John was right about Mycroft's wealth and resources, he likely found out months ago. Her belongings were few, her feminine hygiene products hidden away in dresser compartments and almost invisible nooks and crannies all over the apartment.

Ana did think it strange at the very beginning that Sherlock's apartment had such elaborate, clearly custom made furnitures and areas but didn't give it a second thought, brushing it off as another one of his many quirks she admired. However, when she found out that he was a heroin addict, it suddenly made sense. She thought over the idea of going through the house and seeing if there was heroin stored somewhere but didn't follow through as it would not only be intruding his personal space, a space in which he had welcomed her with trust, it was not her business to do. Nor did he need her approval for he was a grown man; an insanely clever man. Far too clever to ever overdose whereby putting her, and more importantly Watson, in a position to worry.

As Molly walked in the opposite direction, Ana walked towards the chairs. She hadn't managed to yet reach the bookstore, but she did decide it was time to buy clothes for herself and return the ones that she was kindly lent by the women in Sherlock's life. Ana still refused to acknowledge this as her life, readying herself emotionally and physically to take flight at any time. Perhaps this inability to emotionally settle led her to not purchase any of her own clothes. It had been long enough, she thought, that she had been wearing their clothes. Perhaps after the bookstore, she would stop by clothing boutiques in the mall and grab a few basic tops and bottoms.

She pulled out her phone, the very one with the screen still cracked. It was an older Nokia model Sherlock had lying around, one from the 1990's. She remembered because her father had one similar to it when she was a child, only, the color of her father's was a dirty white. He had taken her with him that day when he bought the phone and asked for her input on which color to buy, and Ana cried like a brat because there was no pink so he bought the white version of it and on their way home, stopped by a crafts store to pick up a little pink paint pot and a brush. He spent the night trying to paint the phone with the world's smallest paint brush, making sure not to have any slip inside of the phone and cause damage to it. This was before the time of phone cases, decals and skins, you see. When Ana had woken the following morning, her father eagerly showed it to her at the dinner table awaiting her approval. He was greeted with moans of the opposite, claiming that she liked it in the color which he purchased it in so he stayed up another night trying to remove the paint and not cause damage to the hardware. How selfish had Ana been at some points of her life.

Hovering over Sherlock's number, she debated calling him to end their silent truce. This was something which she found herself doing more than she'd like to. They had barely spoken since her having walked in on him; not one individual at fault as both had inadvertently busied themselves with their work to avoid the other which is why his request to kiss her, and him applying the solution on her, caught her off guard today. Quite frankly, and much to her surprise, she missed his presence. She found herself staring out the restaurant's window in anticipation of seeing him walk past, as he usually did to ensure she wasn't too exhausted or in any sort of problem. In fact, she was sure she woke at an ungodly hour of the night a few weeks ago in the restaurant where she was sleeping in to see a shadow that eerily resembled Sherlock in height and hair. Of course, it couldn't have been and she went back to sleep on the hard booth, pulling the coat full of holes on her in an effort to stay warm through the night.

Because she was home so little in the last few weeks, she had grabbed the tub of aloe solution, the one Sherlock left on her dresser and never spoke of again, for her burns and kept it in the locker of her workplace. She would apply it in the restrooms on her breaks, as unsuccessfully as she could. She struggled to reach certain places on her back, simply get frustrated by the blasphemous positions it required for her to apply it on a certain part of her body and ultimately stop in her frustrations. A few days ago, she accidentally dropped the entirety of the solution in the toilet she had clumsily left opened and perhaps it was her pride, failed to venture to Sherlock about it or ask for more of it. She tried to replicate the solution using the original, larger sample she had at "home" with ingredients found in her workplace but it was an abomination. The Abominable Aloe, she had decided she would market the tragedy as if anyone wanted to buy it.

What she truly wanted was far more than the solution. She wanted to ask him to resume putting it on her, and she was transported to a peaceful place when he finally did today. It sounded creepy in her head, even more so out loud. There was a serene strategy to how he put it on; similar to how Ana's mother would put on hair creams and oils on her, that could not be matched by Ana no matter how hard she tried. With him trying to kiss her once more today, it proved to her that his drunken attempt to kiss her stemmed from a more subconscious desire of his. She was no longer sure she wanted him to put the solution on her, afraid of the message it would continue sending to him. She felt if she asked him, it would send mixed signals or, worse, validate what he was trying to achieve which she did not want to do at all. She wasn't ready for that - not yet. It would be a lie to say she had not given it a second thought one night, she had even imagined Sherlock as her potential partner. Then the nightmares took over as she drifted off to sleep that night, and the cruelty of men and what they were capable of, sexually, came to surface as memories from Thailand played out inside her resting mind. When she woke up, she shook off the thoughts, pledging to herself to never entertain them again. She had moments like this often, these highs and terrible lows. Where one minute she was enjoying life, thinking of a future and then…then, she would think of her past. Those evil men and how they brought nothing but pain to her by taking away her sexual autonomy, and her brother. Her mother. Her father. The highs would never last for longer than a few minutes before she was dragged down.

She dialled his number but it went to voicemail and she didn't do it again. She texted Molly and told her she would be walking to the book store as she had seen people walking by holding recyclable bags with the store's name on it and she assumed it would be in the direction from which the shoppers were coming from. Oddly enough, there were no signs pointing to the book stores; only a few big name brands that she did not care fore.

Shoving the phone back in the pockets, not knowing that the phone was on silent. She missed a few calls that he gave her back to indicate to her that he had missed her call because he was travelling underground, on his way to the mall himself. She began walking in the direction which she thought the bookstore was, and much to her surprise, she was right. Feeling triumphant, she walked in and tried to locate a computer to skim through the online catalogue for details as to where in the large bookstore the books she had wanted were located.

"Song…of…Achilles," she mouthed as she entered the text in to the computer. She stopped typing when she looked up to the screen, but was instead greeted by familiar grey-blue eyes and short, sleek dark brown hair that shone in the same way hers did on the top. They way her mother's did and her mother before her.

"I knew it was you!" he said in broken english, a Danish accent quite visible under a British one that was beginning to form.

The little boy, no more than 9, had climbed on the stool behind the computer to meet her at eye level. Before Ana could react, his arms hung over her neck and his chubby fingers clung on to her tightly, pulling her in to an embrace despite the computer being in between them. He refused to let go as Ana stood with her mouth open, clearly in shock.

"Luka…is that you?" she asked in Danish.

How could she no longer recognize her own brother?

He nodded his little head while hugging her, laughing gleefully. She could feel the outline of his dimples, his smile against her chest.

She pulled away from the embrace but kept his hand on him, unsure who this boy was. Although, it was clear it was her brother.

They had the very same face, the same eyes and the very same hair. They had the very same cluster of very light brown birth marks that resembled freckles around their noses under certain lights, and this bookstore's light was one of them.

She pulled him by his waist off of the stool and set him down on the ground, holding on to his waist tightly while sitting on her knees in front of him; taking it all in.

Luka's upper lip started to twitch, fearing the lack of emotion Ana had displayed and taking it as a sign of rejection. Before he started to cry, she showered him in kisses and hugged him again, telling him she missed him and asking him if he was okay.

When she had last seen him, he was 7. It had been two years now. His hair had once been up to his shoulders, in a bowl cut. He refused to cut it out of routine, he would not leave the house with a hair out of place. He stood before her not only donning a new haircut but wearing a Catholic school child's uniform, with the tie perfectly in place. Luka had been diagnosed with a mild form of autism at an early age when he exhibited signs of routinely patterns associated with a form of autism. It started off as wanting the same breakfast everyday to making he bed in the same manner, but it quickly developed in to something more. If he took the wrong steps walking to school one morning, steps that he did not take every day, he would go back home and start walking again to follow the same steps. The morning Luka was pulled from public schooling and home schooled instead, he had gotten frustrated at his own habit of taking the same steps and broke down in the middle of the street, refusing to go further but his mind said otherwise. Each time he messed up, he would walk back outside his house and start walking to school again. It was at 10:00 AM that his mother, the only one in the house who was sick and in bed that morning, received a call that Luka was not at school. When she went outside, she found him crying silently outside on the porch.

It was this routine that made Ana question who this boy was, who was so obviously changed. Back in Denmark, Luka refused to wear ties because they scared him as he had once seen a movie with a man being choked with one. In fact, he cried going in to gentlemen's shoppes, clinging to her or her mother's legs in anxiety each time they walked past ties.

It was not long that Ana noticed that every few seconds, Luka reached for the tie that was no doubt bothering him. Before even touching the tie, however, he pulled his hand back. A look of confusion and consideration came on his face as he did so, and he repeated this every few seconds. He did this as he spoke, as he hugged her.

But he would not touch the tie.

Ana grabbed Luka's hands and turned them over when he brought them away from the tie. Tears formed in her eyes. There were small bandages covering the palm of both hands, with scars and scabs forming over newly inflicted wounds.

Ana took his hand, careful not to squeeze too tight for she knew what that did. Ever so often, Luka tried to reach for the tie and dragged Ana's hand to the tie only to set it back down again. Looking around for Magnussun, knowing he would not be far behind, she started to walk out of the bookstore.

"Where we going, Ana?"

"Away, together. Just you and me, Luka, baby. Take off your tie, you don't have to wear it if you don't want to."

"But the head mistress says I have to," he reached for the tie again and withdrew, "If I don't, uncle gets mad."

Ana bent down, holding him tight still, and carefully took off the tie herself - tossing it to the ground and getting back up.

"He's not your uncle," she hissed.

"Yes, he is!" Luka took his hand away and bent over on the ground to retrieve the tie. Ana tried to grab his hand and pull him back but he started crying, and through his tears, sat cowered on the ground holding the little tie and trying ferociously to clean off the dirty snow off of it. He cried more and more as he tried to clean it off but the dirty snow had stained the navy tie, and his autism wouldn't allow him to see past it.

"Luka," Ana leaned over in sympathy and helped him clean up the tie as well, "Come with me, I can clean it up for you when I take you home, ok?"

The bookstore's exit opened up to the London underground station and not back in to the mall itself, and she did not recognize where she was. With Luka's hand in one hand and the tie in the other, she shoved the tie in her pocket and shuffled through her pocket with her now free hand. She was in a panic mode, not even knowing whether this was a dream of hers or reality. She started walking in panic, past commuters and mall goers, trying to pull out the phone and turn the screen on which seemed to take forever, but not nearly as long as how long it took to get service.

Luka continued to cry as he reached for his neck where the tie was as a force of habit, only to put his hand back down.

"He'll get mad at me, Ana!" he managed to say in their native tongue.

"Min kære, it will be okay. I saved some money for us, and we can go away right now if you'd like."

He looked around fearfully and looked confused. With Luka very clearly distraught over the tie and whether or not to leave, Ana struggled to console him and had forgotten where she came out of from the mall. To ensure he would not feel the anxiety she was feeling, she knelt down once more in front of him and hugged him, assuring him the tie will be clean and nobody would hurt him.

Footsteps grew closer from behind Ana but she dismissed it as another commuter. She had not realized that she had walked to the underground parking of the mall, where a narrow, remote pathway lead to another level of the parking lot which is where they were.

Luka's wailing quieted slowly and Ana breathed a sigh of relief just before she felt a burn around her neck and her eyesight begun to blur. She grabbed at air with her hands, as if reaching out to it would ensure it's return to her lungs. Luka disappeared once more, replaced by brief darkness as she fell on the concrete, hearing a loud crack of the phone in her coat pocket as she fell on it with all her weight.

Luka...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My timeline is following the events of season three but at a far slower pace to achieve the character development I am seeking to portray and for the general plot I have in mind. It's worth noting that Ana has now been living with Sherlock for around 11 months. I hope you're enjoying it so far, I have exams happening over the course of the next two weeks so because I did not want to leave you guys hanging (again) I decided to update a chapter as soon as I got a window to do so before I completely get engulfed by exams. Then, I'm free for four weeks and I hope to put out at least a chapter a week, if not two chapters a week. Enjoy, and I love feedback. Let me know what I could do to improve! I love constructive criticism. So long as it isn't downright hateful/evil because, hey, this is, above all, a platform to do what we wish to characters and put them in stories we wish so we can't be too mad at writers given that they have the liberty to do what they wish just as everyone else here does! Peace and love. xo.


	11. Perversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings. Sherlock has a decision to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally done my exams! Going to try to aim for a chapter a week, if not two chapters, since I am free until mid-January. Enjoy!

Luka was gone and she started to question whether the encounter even took place, whether she had dreamt it. Her dreams were often this cruel and real and it became hard to distinguish from reality at times, times like this.

She continued to question reality until she finally, properly, awoke up to the smell of wet rubber, with her face pressed against the floor of the van she was in. She first looked at her pants, and the rest of her clothes - searching tenaciously for signs of perverse invasions, much like how she did when she awoke on floors back in Thailand with no recollection of how she got there in the first place. Her pants were wet at the kneecaps, from having been in contact with the wet carpet of the van and beyond that, no attempt to undress her was made.

Feeling brief relief overcoming her, she was quickly humbled by the realization that this was real, and not a dream, and that she had seen Luka. She then looked around the van from where she was on the ground, not wanting to call attention to herself if there were people in the van - alas, it was empty, and the only source of light was from the windshield which was not tinted like the rest of the windows.

The dim lighting of the parking lot invoked nausea which only worsened each second as continued to regain consciousness and the feelings in her limbs back. Ana tried to get up too quickly, only to fall back down as her head began to spin and her nose started to feel warm. She found her hands, numb as they were, and brought them to her nose to feel the thick liquid. The smell of iron filled her nostrils, but her nose was not the source of the bleeding. She traced it back to her forehead, retracting her hand almost immediately as she winced in pain when her fingers met the gash that was beginning engulf the skin around it with a boil-like swelling.

Footsteps from outside of the van made Ana cease and assume her position on the floor of the van in which she was in prior to gaining conscious, but, just as she started looking around for weapons with which to arm herself with, Luka's wailing and calling out for Ana from outside in the parking lot filled her ears. Almost instinctively, as his safety took precedence over hers, she stopped looking for the weapon and, as if she was possessed, started to kick at the back door of the van and yell for him.

The door immediately opened but Luka was nowhere in sight. An overweight man in black Adidas tracksuit top and bottoms stood in front of her with his phone held tightly in his chubby, grotesque fingers; the sweat from his hands evident on the phone screen, the very phone screen on which an audio recording of her brother crying played obnoxiously as the man smiled down at her in triumph. She continued to kick the air, where the back door of the van was mere seconds ago, hoping her legs would find him but he threw the phone next to her and grabbed her by her calves, hauling her out of the van effortlessly. As she was being dragged, she tried to reach for the phone he had thrown where she sat but he contorted his body as such - with his right leg while he pulled on her calves like an animal with his left hand - that his right foot found her hand trying to hold on to the phone and stepped on it with all his weight.

She let go of the phone as soon as the cold, wet hardness of his boots and the intensity of his weight met the bones in her hand, as he let her fall on the ground, face first. He grabbed her by her hair, supporting himself on one knee and holding her face close to his masked face.

"Probably not how you expected a man to get on his knees for you, is it, you bitch?" His voice was as ugly as his body, and Ana could tell this was the most exercise he had in months - if not years - for he stopped every two words or so to inhale deeply and looked to be out of breath. What was more disgusting than his breathing was the smell of his breath from which the more she struggled to get away, the more fiercely he shook her by her hair.

"This is your karma for kicking me in the dick," he continued to speak as he held her hair in one hand. "Bet you thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? That night was for Magnussun, this one's for me."

—

Sherlock slid the phone back in to his coat pocket, rather bemused as to why Ana had called him. She was not one to make calls of a domestic nature, and the matter had to be urgent or concerning if she ended their truce of cellular silence first. He could not remember the last time she had called him for he had no affinity to reserve useless information such as that and the likes of the solar system. He was no astronaut, he had no use for such unnecessary information schools insisted of teaching children who'd never utilize that information in their working, adult lives. The school system itself was a joke.

He pulled the phone back out in frustration, and noticeable impatience. He kept turning the screen on and off, as if that would suddenly bring about a text or call from Ana.

He had tried calling her back on a total of three different occasions but his calls went immediately to voicemail, with the fourth call not even going through and a message saying the number was currently not available.

As he exited the tube, he stood in the flurry of individuals pushing past to get inside of the train. Some even hurled insults at him to get out of the way, standing there like a mad man as trains zoomed by his still, towering frame fixated on his phone screen in anticipation of an acknowledgement that all was well.

"Wanker!" A man brushed his shoulders, brief case in his right, mittened hands and boarded the train behind just as the doors closed. He gave Sherlock the middle finger as the door closed nearly on his hand, had he not pulled away. The train left the station which emptied again, just as suddenly as it had filled. The next train would not be for another half an hour, for it was late in the night when trains and buses came less frequently. Yes, even in London.

Sherlock paid no attention to the musings around him and instead, began to dial Molly's phone number. When she did not pick up either, a feeling of uncertainty struck his pit followed by a shiver, but that was from the lack of nicotine and opiate in his body. He brought an unlit cigarette to his mouth, inhaling the scent and put it back inside his coat pocket along with the phone. He rubbed his temple and tried to call again, going to both Molly and Ana's voicemail. The train station was under the mall, and on the other side of the entrance of the mall; totalling just under a ten minute walk until he reached it.

He was on his way to the mall even before he had received the call from one of his many poppy suppliers who had summoned him there. Sherlock refused to use heroin and drugs others conjured and mixed, opting instead to purchase the raw poppy itself and conjure his own heroin. When Sherlock found out that Ana and Molly were going to the mall, knowing it had been Ana's first time in a public place as big as that since her arrival in London nearly a year ago, he had wanted to ensure she would be safe so - with nothing else to do and very few cases to occupy him - he decided he was going to follow her, to put it quite bluntly. The word "stalking" made him cringe; he was aware he could come across as socially inept but perverse? That was always Mycroft's forte, not his. More than to ensure her safety, he wanted to see if someone would try to attack her as the last attack on her happened when she digressed from routine and away from his home.

The phone suddenly vibrated loudly in his hand as Sherlock stood, still, near the train platform just as he was about to put it back in to his coat pocket and make his way to the mall. Without looking as to who was calling, he tapped the answer option on the screen, put it to his ear and eagerly said hello…only to be greeted by an agitated male's voice, one which he recognized.

"I've been bloody waiting for yonks, mate, where the fuck are ye'?"

Sherlock held tightly on to his stomach, aching as it was and struggled to respond. As he was in the middle of the call, the line he was on currently was put on hold as an incoming call - one from Molly - made his ear canal vibrate. He put Molly's call on hold to inform the man on the other line.

"Rain check on that, something just came up."

Molly sounded panicked, more often than she normally was. He could only assume it had something to do with Ana, otherwise, why call Sherlock?

"Is Ana with you?" Sherlock asked.

"No, I can't—find—anywhere…"

The signal in the basement was weak and Sherlock set off to find the nearest stairs to a higher level to fix the audio, all the while trying to tell Molly to stay on the line. It were moments like these which reminded Sherlock of how cancerous technology was, and while he admired the rise of it from a scientific-evolutionary point of view, it rendered it's users at its mercy. The cold aluminum on the phone, still his matte black iPhone 5, stayed attached to his ears until he reached the book store which had an exit on its lower level leading to the subway station he had just got off on.

As he ascended the elevator leading to the main floor of the bookstore, the signal got better but Molly had hung up. As he dialled Molly back, the elevator reached the peak and Sherlock did not notice, causing him to trip forwards with a sudden jerk right in to Molly who was also on her phone.

"I can't find Ana, I've called her phone, asked around, it's been two hours now!"

"Trust you, Molly Hooper, to lose an entire person," Sherlock, in his own panic and grumpy attitude from the lack of nutrients of the illegal variety in his system, snappily responded which made Molly feel worse.

"I'm sorry, I'm not quite myself lately. She's never been here before, so the most likely of cases is that she's perhaps simply walking around the mall right now trying to locate you."

He didn't believe that himself, of course; why would Ana call him if that was case? Telling Molly this would only make her worry, and potentially question Ana's past to which she had not been privy of.

Sherlock looked around the bookstore, spotting a dominion of cameras strategically placed along the exposed industrial piping on the ceilings of the modern bookstore. The cameras were hidden within mirrors, to throw off shoplifters and their untrained eyes. Sherlock spotted the glares of the lenses behind the mirrors instantly, however.

"Wait here,"

As if Molly was a child and he, her guardian, he pointed in the direction of a couch placed in a corner intended for reading books for Molly to sit down and wait for him to return to. Sherlock found the nearest employee and pulled him aside, minimally explaining why he needed access to the cameras but the employee happened to be the on-site manager and he refused, unless Sherlock came back with security clearance or someone with higher authority, like say, from Scotland Yard. A woman, according to the manager, a few months ago lied about losing her child in the bookstore and requested to see the cameras. They allowed it, but it was evident she had no child and she had concocted one in a bid to catch her husband cheating, whom she attacked right there in the store; barring future mall-comers permanently from requesting to see the cameras for actual emergencies and not domestic problems.

Sherlock entertained the thought of calling Lestrade. While Lestrade and Sherlock had grown to become good, professional friends over the last few years, again an attribute for which he thanked John for instilling in him, he had not yet made as much of an effort with Lestrade on a personal level and certainly not enough of an effort that would justify Sherlock introducing him to Ana. Calling John would be unnecessary, as he did not want to involve John and Mary in Ana's case upon the shared insistence of Ana as the two were busy planning their wedding and focusing on their careers to finance their wedding - a silly, medieval concept Sherlock never quite understood. Sherlock's disappearance and reappearance had also taken a toll on John and he was still adjusting to working together on smaller cases with Sherlock, with Sherlock taking on the bigger ones alone as this was his full time "job" whereas John's responsibilities were amass. John was not even aware of the attack on Ana a few months ago, in fact, to John, Ana and Sherlock no longer shared a client relationship, but more of a roommate one which Ana requested be maintained in their presence - when she was even present.

Sherlock weighed the pros and cons if he went through with involving Lestrade. Lestrade would be useful in situations like these, his professional status could assist Sherlock in emergencies like these pertaining to Ana; but would Lestrade take kindly to Sherlock's harbouring of Ana? Unlike Molly, Lestrade could pull up a database and search for Ana to see if she was on file for anything - including being a fugitive, an illegal, non-tax paying immigrant to which the government was enforcing strict penalties upon over the last few years with the EU in turmoil along with the rest of the world from which refugees fled illegally to the EU. On the other hand, Lestrade was, by nature, an erroneously compassionate man; far more than Sherlock was. Were he to hear out Ana's story, perhaps he would sympathize and look past it, even aid Sherlock.

The aluminium body of the phone greeted Sherlock's ears one more, as his heart beat grew faster waiting on Lestrade to answer the phone.

A click.

"Since when do you call me outside of office hours?" Lestrade spoke from the other side of the line in a manner which was dowsed with poorly hidden joy under his attempt to sound surprised.

"I need your help, how fast can you get to my location if I text it?"

"Is everything alright? You don't sound good, mate. Something happened to John?"

"John's momentarily crippled with the stresses of planning a wedding, he's useless to me right now. I'll fill you in once you get here. Please, just hurry."

"You're not in some drug related trouble again, are you? I thought —"

"Don't make me regret this already embarrassing palaver. Hurry, you and your Scotland Yard I.D."

"Here I was thinking Sherlock Holmes could possibly be in the Christmas spirit and ask me for a pint!," scoffing, Lestrade continued, "I'm off-duty, you know, I could just say no to helping you with whatever you're working on,"

"It's not work, it is…personal. Please."

"I'm in the car right now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Review, subscribe & comment! I love feedback. If I'm not capturing characters correctly, let me know & how I can make it better. I think Sherlock is a very difficult character to totally write an entire script for because he's so intelligent so at times, I feel rather intimidated by the high standards previous writers and Doyle himself have wrote him which is why I tend to unintentionally avoid a lot of conversations with him and focus so much on Ana sometimes but I will have to "women up" (yay equality) and start writing more of him despite my worries because, after all, he is the second main character!


	12. Distraught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Lestrade watch the events in the parking lot take place, helpless and guiltily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took longer since it's one of the longest ones I've written and I really wanted to give you guys something good. I was also dealing with a financial disaster with my phone company and I am still dealing with it which made this chapter delayed because of all the stress and unnecessary trips to their stores they've put me through. I know I promised to put out a chapter a week or more and haven't been delivering but I'm trying! Sorry guys. Hope you enjoy the following chapter as much as I did writing it.

It was now nearing 9 PM, the mall scheduled to close within the next two hours and with it, their window to access the security cameras. Ana had been missing for around 3 hours now, with her last call to him at around 6:13 P.M. which Sherlock had now memorized as he monitored each minute; each minute wasted not trying to look for her but his hands were tied, and unfortunately, his career didn't give him the authority that a police man would have. He could at any time be inaugurated in to the force, Lestrade had practically begged him on immeasurable occasions. Sherlock Holmes practically kept Scotland Yard in business, with not only the attention of the press he drew but the credibility that came with every case he worked alongside Scotland Yard. This was merely a hobby to him, or so he told himself and others, finding and solving these cases; merely an outlet to exercise his mind like no other thing in the world had been capable of doing before it. Unlike heroin, among other drugs he occasionally dabbled in, it wasn't as frowned upon by society.

Lestrade took his time arriving to the mall while Sherlock, as soon as he had gotten off of the phone with Lestrade, walked over to Molly with a circumspect smile on his face indicating that the call was from Ana. He then instructed Molly to go home under the false pretence that Ana was safe, and that was a call from one of her family members, whom she ran in to at the mall and ventured off with, and with her phone battery dead and no number memorized, she could not call Molly to assure her of this.

Molly questioned Sherlock at first, why it took Ana so long to let them know and why she did not come in to the shop Molly was in, which Ana knew of, to let her know; questions which Sherlock shut down with his resourceful wit until Molly believed him, cheered up and finally chose to go home. He walked her to her car, parked outside of the mall as opposed to in the underground parking lot, surveying the area carefully to ensure they had not been followed. Thankfully, Molly had not noticed this as she powered the car on and waited for it to get warm. What she did notice was the impatience with which Sherlock was standing idly by with, rocking himself back and forth with a pained expression. She recognized that expression from not only earlier at the mall but also when she had stopped by his flat in that morning to pick up Ana. She recognized withdrawal symptoms when she saw them, her own brother had a history with various opiates she rarely talked about. She also wasn't sure if she believed him about Ana, but maybe she should.

"Sherlock," she started.

He peered his head in to the car window as she rolled them down.

"When was the last time you…?"

"Don't," he said. "Just, don't."

She nodded, followed by an apologetic smile as she started the ignition and quickly rolled up the window.

"Drive attentively, Molly Hooper," His way of saying thank you for looking out for him but he did not need the repeated inquisition regarding his socially frowned upon penchants each time his body defied him and showed weakness.

Molly drove off and he gave in to the stresses by lighting the cigarette that sat in his coat pocket all this time, taking what felt like the longest inhale in history. His stomach ceased spasming and his bulging, pained veins around his temples stopped agonizing him briefly so that he could enjoy the cigarette. By the time he finished smoking, now feeling refreshed, Lestrade's silver BMW 5 series pulled up in front of Sherlock and parked where Molly's car had been. Wasting no time, Sherlock ushered for Lestrade to follow him and the two made their way to the bookstore's manager once more, whom only needed a second's flashing of Lestrade's I.D. to understand the severity of the situation.

Lestrade walked beside the manager at first as they headed to the control room but deliberately slowed his pace to walk beside Sherlock so that he could ask what the issue was in further detail. Rather, to get any piece of information he could. If he was to assist him, then he had the right to know the context and consequences, had he not?

So that the manager could not hear, he leaned in closer to Sherlock's ear and asked, "So what's this about then? Why do you need to see the cameras?"

Sherlock analyzed the proximity that Lestrade had suddenly increased between them, perhaps Sherlock's invitation to this personal crucible made him feel braver than before and Lestrade would use this window of opportunity to get closer to Sherlock, to lessen a gap that the both knew was always there. Sherlock allowed it.

"There's a woman under my protection and living with me, she has been for some time…" before Sherlock could continue, Lestrade interrupted him.

"What, like a cousin?"

Sherlock wasn't sure if he should be offended or not.

"No, not a cousin…I hope you're certainly not implying that the would-be women in my personal life are restricted to blood relations,"

"As a matter of fact, I am. Nothing gets past you, does it," Lestrade said sarcastically followed by a cheeky smile and, "so what then, like a girlfriend?"

This was why Sherlock rarely got along with men outside of his work place; their idea of conversation was not Sherlock's, their activities were not ones Sherlock related to. Going out for pints, talking about sports and especially the way in which they regarded women. Men clung to women as a topic of discussion, and when women were brought up in conversation, men assumed that women were only there for sexual enjoyment.

Sherlock internally shrunk with a mixture of embarrassment and revulsion, the latter at the predictability of Lestrade's question as opposed to the thought of being Ana's beau which was a rather nice thought until Sherlock reminded himself that he would not pursue that subject further on the account of her not being comfortable with that - the very last thing he wanted to make her feel, taking in to consideration the unfortunate events she was subjected to and recovering from. To expect her to comply, or to rush her in any way or form with his constant, incessant desires to kiss her potentially made him come across as just another man out to exploit her sexuality and femininity; for which he didn't necessarily hate himself, but felt an emotion close to loathing.

"No, not girlfriend. As a client,"

"Didn't realize you started operating a bed and breakfast for all your clients! Or is it just the female ones, eh," Lestrade poked at his shoulder as they walked behind the manager through endless corridors, striding past employees either on their breaks or working in the stock room. He continued, "To be honest, the lads and I at the station always thought you and John were a couple and I've seen how you look at Mary with disdain, always thought you were jealous!" He said that casually, as well.

Sherlock had heard all this before, Mrs. Hudson being the main culprit with her old-fashioned world views which surprised Sherlock considering her promiscuous past. His constant questioning, borderline demonizing, of his sexuality no longer phased him and he had learned to bleakly smile at their unfunny jokes as if platonic relationships between men were so unnatural. Sweat trickled down Lestrade's temple indicating to Sherlock that he was nervous, he heard it on his tone, as well as he tried to make jokes in an attempt to - poorly - relate with Sherlock. At least he was trying, and the haste in which he answered Sherlock's call to arms was an ode to that. Most at the station, namely Anderson and Donovan, didn't even try to relate to him, only ostracize and ridicule which Sherlock happily returned.

They came to the control room slash manager's office which was the size of Sherlock's kitchen, if not smaller judging by the proximity in which they all stood close together. Above the narrow, long desk cluttered with Christmas decorations and paperwork was a shelf which hoisted four small, lesser than 20 inches, televisions that were currently showing the store live. While Lestrade was the one with the badge, the manager listened to Sherlock's authoritative commands and played back the tapes over the course of the last three hours. They found her entering the store, then disappearing. That was not her fault but the placement of the cameras, and she popped up on another camera seconds later. Sherlock fixated his eyes on the screen, analyzing each shot from when she entered the store to when she found the computer and started searching the catalogue. Lestrade, instead of looking at the screen, analyzed Sherlock with the same fixation visible in Sherlock's eyes. Just who was this girl, he thought. She surely must have been terribly important.

On the computer screen, a little boy approached from behind the computer screen. Sherlock watched him climb the step-stool behind the computer screen, grabbing Ana and drawing her in for a hug.

In Sherlock's pockets, his phone rang and he looked to see who it was, with one eye still fixed on the screen in front of him. It was Molly, probably worried and asking about Ana despite his reassurance. He put the phone on silent again and put it back in his pocket; a bad habit of his as he hated being interrupted when walking through his mind palace and doing his meditations. He texted her he would text her when he was home and shut the phone down. Before shutting the phone down, he saw that it was now 9:14 P.M. Where could Ana be?

"Change to screen A8, time-stamp 5:51 P.M. Now."

The boy's face couldn't be visible from the angle of the current camera because the back of Ana's hair eclipsed his face and body but Sherlock noted there was a mirror right behind where Ana stood by the glare in one of the screens. The manager pulled up the camera from behind the little boy, and zoomed in to the mirror where Sherlock pointed to. The mirror was a big one, the ones in convenience stores or shoppes to discourage shop lifters and didn't need extensive zooming for Sherlock to make the connection.

The boys hair, eyes and nose were the same colours as Ana's, his facial features when smiling bore more than a coincidental resemblance to Ana's. Her brother was what, 7? Seven when she last saw him, which would have been two years ago. The boy on the screen looked to be about the age he would be now.

Sherlock knew Ana's intentions to run away. He had known for some time. The way she skimmed cable networks, except the ones that talked about grand escapes, or how she kept her belongings in a bag. To anyone else, she would have been the perfect flatmate in how tidy she was, how minimalistic of a life she led but Sherlock knew that was out of her flight or flight functioning, there was no will to fight anymore. She likely had been waiting for this opportunity, to be reunited with her brother. To see her reunited with him made him happy, but the contentment was brief. There was more to this. This had to be a trap. Nothing was ever acquired this easily, certainly not a boy who had been taken hostage for years by a deranged megalomaniac that was Magnussen.

Sherlock and Lestrade reanalyzed all of the cameras in the bookstores over the course of the last four or so hours. Unfortunately, the scope of the cameras in the bookstores was limited to within the store. A man of a large, horizontally and vertically, frame dressed in all black had entered the store just as the little boy had entered, although he walked a meter behind at all times even when Ana and the boy embraced. As Ana and the boy exited the store, the man followed the two, fixated on the back of Ana at all times. Before he left the store, he limped towards a book to look at the price with his phone to his ear, then scoffed at the price of the book and not at the person on the other line. Sherlock could make his scoffing out. The man set the book down, if the word set was synonymous with "throw angrily across the sales floor" as he put the phone back in his pocket. Sherlock rewatched these three minutes repeatedly, trying the patience of the manager.

The man looked lazy. He looked, no, he was quite evidently fat. He limped. He looked like someone who's weapon of choice would have been a garage tool, something he would not have to go out of his way to attain. He looked like someone who had sustained quite an injury to either his shins or to his genitalia, causing not permanent but certainly long lasting damage. Sherlock was aware of Ana fending off of the man who had hit her with the crow bar and the places where she had kicked him, and kicked him hard and he surveyed those areas of the man's body via his motor movements.

"Where is the control room located for the cameras outside of the bookstore?"

Lestrade, tired from his own long day at work and ready to fall asleep in a deep slumber any time, was shaken awake by Sherlock's suddenly loud tone after minutes of silence as both Lestrade and the manager were scared of disturbing Sherlock. The manager directed them as to where the security office of the mall was. Thankfully it was just around the corner thus saving them time trying to find it among all this crowd. Lestrade and Sherlock didn't stop even when asked to by the security guard supervisor, instead Lestrade flashed his I.D., asked them where the cameras were as they walked down the corridor and the man lead them to the camera control room; far more elaborate and equipped than the bookstore's one. The entire wall was fashioned with large, flat screen televisions that had around eight different camera perspective on each television.

Sherlock had noted the time around which Ana, the boy and the man trailing behind had left the bookstore and, once again, navigated the controls himself as Lestrade and the security guard watched.

"Get out,"

Sherlock looked at the obviously half asleep security guard, dismissing him. He turned to Lestrade and he nodded in agreement. The guard left, fumbling with the door lock in his dreary state and stood outside the control room trying to stay awake.

Sherlock clenched at his stomach with his left hand and grasped at the chair behind him desperately, sitting down on the cushioned surface but refusing to remove his right hand off of the controls as he pulled open the camera controls right outside the bookstore and watched the three leave the store. His mouth resisted the urge to puke, the nausea from the withdrawals getting the best of him as he soldiered on and followed the three people on the screen from camera to camera, down in to the basement.

Lestrade was less concerned with the camera screen than he was with Sherlock's health. With little knowledge of what Sherlock was looking for or at, he unfortunately could not sympathize with whoever was on the screen but Sherlock, Sherlock was his friend and he knew withdrawal symptoms when he saw them from having once worked in the narcotics department when he joined the task force as a youth.

His right hand started spasming until he was forced to remove it from the control board briefly until it stopped spasming and looked at Lestrade as if to say "don't you dare" say anything regarding his current state, not now and not later to anyone else. Lestrade silently watched Sherlock struggle with the control board when his hand semi-ceased spasming. There was only one camera now on which Sherlock could see what was happening, and that too, through shadows. The camera was placed in such a weird position that anyone entering the underground parking had to go through a little tunnel way which had no cameras, and the one camera only caught shadows of the people and two cars in the corner parked closely together. There was one small, black fiat 500 with a license plate that could not be made out and a white van right in front of the cameras, with no license plate. The dim lights in the parking lot cast shadows of objects and people directly on to the white surface of the white van.

Sherlock looked at the shadows in silence, following every movement. The little boy bent down on the ground as Ana stood hovering over the boy. It had only just occurred to Sherlock that in all the months he had known Ana, she rarely discussed her brother with him. He had not a clue as to what his name could be, or even his initials. On the camera, the shadow of Ana leaned down and from behind, Sherlock could see a third figure approach from behind Ana. Lestrade looked at the screen, anxious by what was to come and shaken by what he expected to come. He expected a crowbar, the very one which she had been attacked by but the man lifted his hand and formed a fist, bringing it to Ana's temple with brute force.

Lestrade interfered with the control board, pausing the cameras. Realizing pausing it wasn't enough and the image of her on the ground while the boy looked to be screaming wasn't helpful, Lestrade shut off the screen for that one television the image was on. He saw how much it affected Sherlock, and paced behind the chair Sherlock sat on holding on to his belt and wiping away the sweat on his temples waiting for the feeling of guilt pass. He was, first and foremost, a police officer. Assuming she was comatose, or worse, dead, he should have been there - despite knowing her or not.

On the camera, from the moment Ana got on the ground to the moment she was hit, it must have happened in under a minute. As Sherlock watched it play out, it felt like an aeon. His mouth was open in blatant distraught and helplessness. The spasming in his body stopped, or maybe he stopped caring for it because all he could feel was the pain in his head seeing her head hit the pavement. His stomach pains, like his spasming, also no longer seemed to be there. His throat went dry and his eye, from either being fixated on the screen for so long or perhaps by the brutality of the scene, started to get wet. Sherlock closed his eyes and looked away from the camera, refusing to play that back. He refused, his hands involuntarily falling off of the control board. The intensity of the blow, the angle from which it came down upon and it's fatality, Sherlock pondered it's effect on her - physically. Could she be dead? Simply rendered unconscious? His mind offered him many scenarios, optimistic hopes but all he felt was disappointment. In himself. For allowing this to happen to her once again. The timestamp read six something P.M. when she was attacked, just minutes after she had called him humorously. He was on the train and he didn't pick up her call because of being so caught up with the consequences of his habits. He had put his phone on silent when she called due to it's constant ringing, not even checking who was calling, making his head hurt. It was his fault.

"Who was she?" Lestrade stopped pacing, taking a more aggressive tone with Sherlock.

"Wh—was?"

Was. Past tense. Dead?

"Stop. Just stop," Lestrade spun the swivel chair around, forcing Sherlock to face him. Sherlock held his head in his left hand, unfazed by the sudden motion as Lestrade carried on speaking, "I didn't point out your obvious withdrawals, because you're a friend and I know when being friendly borders lecturing, and I'm not your mother to be lecturing you so I didn't mention your cramping, your nausea, your sweating. A GCSE drop out could spot withdrawals!"

He paused, collecting himself. They were only withdrawal symptoms. He could not be mad at Sherlock for that, they were indications that he had made an effort to stop indulging and he could only hope that he did not give in and turn to them. He further continued, although in a more calming, understanding tone.

"You wouldn't bring me over on not only a weekend, not when I'm off duty, just to access security cameras for a case that wasn't dear to you. Who was she?"

"No, not was. Is. The angle at which the —his— it—" Sherlock tried to turn the chair around back to the control board, his fingers fumbling and touching his lips in a distraught manner.

He was clearly in shock, Lestrade thought. He put his foot on the swivel contraption at the bottom of the chair and pressed down on it, preventing Sherlock from turning away from him.

"Someone wanted? On the run? You wouldn't not tell me unless it pertained to the legality of your relationship with her. Are you protecting yourself? Protecting her?"

Fuck.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" Lestrade, now with his arms crossed, leaned in close to Sherlock's body that was radiating heat and sweat in an unnatural amount. Any closer and Lestrade was afraid Sherlock's skin would tear apart, ligament by ligament, revealing the Hound of Baskerville - a creature Lestrade always imagined to take the form of a werewolf - ever since he had read Watson's blog years ago.

"Both. The latter,"

Lestrade still had his foot on the chair and Sherlock still refused to meet his eyes.

"What was her name?"

"Is. Ana. I ne—-"

"The kid?" Lestrade didn't let him speak until he got some answers, and his involvement in this was justified properly. Sherlock seemed to be in a rush to resume the video, but Lestrade refused to let him return to it.

"Her brother, a little boy no more than 9 with mild autism."

"The man?"

"I wouldn't have asked you here had I knowledge of the man,"

Sherlock got annoyed, getting off of the chair and sneaking under Lestrade's arms and back to the screen. Lestrade knew he could not physically hold Sherlock back, he stood many inches taller than himself and had more muscle on him by a long shot.

"She's a fugitive, Craig,"

"Now I think you just do this to take the piss," He wasn't sure how he was expected to react to the revelation that she was a fugitive. Perhaps Sherlock expected him to be outraged, allow his moral duty towards the law to blind him and report her and had been hesitant, but after Sherlock dragging on the issue of her identity, Lestrade assumed such was the case and he did was willing to set her citizenship status aside if Sherlock Holmes trusted her and vouched for her.

"Greg. Sorry. She came in to the country undocumented via a very active sexual slave trade between London and Thailand, the very one that Donovan's sex crime department tried to combat in '97. I think Moriarty had - has - ties in the trade and she's somehow linked to Moriarty. And Magnussen. I'm struggling with her case and she's living with me. She's a friend, please," Sherlock said all this without looking back at Lestrade. He had given his approval when he went along with his joke, ignoring the key word fugitive in it. He now felt more comfortable sharing details about her with him.

Moriarty? He was dead. Maybe Sherlock had a slip of the tongue in his distraught state, Lestrade tried to reassure himself. Before he could ask Sherlock more, Sherlock turned on the screen and resumed playing the video where Lestrade had paused it. The man first grabbed the little boy, taking something from his hands and throwing it on the ground around the 6:16 P.M. mark. He then took him to the small Fiat which drove off almost immediately. So he had an accomplice. Naturally. He walked down the hallway again. Sherlock zoomed in on his face and printed it out, placing the picture in his dress pant pocket and continued with the video. Lestrade watched. He picked up Ana's body off the ground and slung it over his shoulders, opening one of the doors of the van and throwing her inside. They had to squint to see what was happening because the car was so far away from the camera. Thankfully, they had gotten the man's face printed.

They watched regardless. The timestamp on the video showed was now around 8:49 P.M., more than an two hours after she was struck and ten minutes before Lestrade arrived. Lestrade was kicking himself for his tardiness in his head. Sherlock slowly forwarded the video. The man was pacing the entirety of the time in the empty parking lot. It was baffling how empty it was, it truly was. London folks preferred using the tube and very few owned cars in London with the insane insurance costs and rising gas prices. The man paced playing with his phone, laughing to himself when a few people did walk or drove through the parking lot. Then he looked as if he had heard something from the van and walked towards it, opening it and Ana kicked at him. Lestrade smiled and breathed a sigh of relief, jeering for her as she kicked the man and Sherlock stopped sweating. They watched the man throw the phone at her, then pull her barbarically and tactfully out of the van.

It was a rollercoaster of emotions watching the footage, both overcome with a feeling of guilt and helplessness. For Lestrade and even more so for Sherlock.

From what could be made out of the angle the camera was placed, the man then attempted to slap her until Ana pulled off the exhaust pipe from under the car. Sherlock zoomed in to the video, and the pipe seemed to be coming off anyways. She struck the man, still underneath his heavy body, right in the face. He let go of her hair and she heaved her body back in to the van and he made no effort to follow her on the account of losing so much blood.

"Blood. That's good. Blood's good!" Lestrade quickly realized blood samples could be pulled, even if the face scans pulled from the video footage potentially failed and there was no license plate on the van.

Ana hit the man again, and he fell on the ground. Sherlock watched her go back inside the van and grab the phone that was flung at her.

"Phone's even better. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas," Sherlock's grin did not last long when he saw Ana run away from the scene. He tried to use the cameras to navigate where she could have gone. More importantly, if there was a Fiat 500 anywhere near the scene. There thankfully wasn't.

The two watched this all play out on the camera. The camera read 9:09 P.M, all of this taking place as Sherlock and Lestrade sat up in the control room. As Ana walked out of the parking lot, there was a car that was circling the parking lot. A familiar car. Sherlock recognized the licence plate and smiled to himself. It was Molly. She had not gone home like he told her to and instead circled around the mall. He should be mad, but right now, he was simply thankful. He watched as Ana got in the car, holding on to her head and Molly driving off. He checked the time stamp, and it was 9:14 P.M., the very minute Molly had tried calling him. That will teach him to never turn his phone off again.

Lestrade called Molly's phone, because it was easier and quicker than Sherlock turning on the phone and waiting for it to restart. Molly confirmed she had Ana, and she had brought her back to Sherlock's apartment. Sherlock was embarrassed and did not speak. Molly would have questions, much like Lestrade had questions. Ana would be worse off.

Sherlock now watched the cameras, live. The man lay on the ground, unconscious still. Before leaving the control room, Lestrade disabled that one camera in the parking lot so they would not be seen called in the guard who was sat nearly asleep on the floor of the hallway. He had him deleted hours of footage upon Sherlock's insistence and lied to him and said it was for federal reasons. The man did as he was instructed, and Sherlock and Lestrade ran out of the control room down to the parking lot. Sherlock turned on his phone immediately, greeted by a mass of texts from Molly. He was tempted to call Ana, until he came upon the broken remnants of the phone he had given her. She must have fallen on it and it broke in her pocket. Beside the broken phone was a small tie, the little boy's that the man took and dashed on the ground. Sherlock cleaned the tie up with his scarf and put it in his pocket. He also retrieved the various pieces and threw them in his pocket, following Lestrade and walking to the man on the ground. He looked to be gaining conscious, and Sherlock saw this. He grabbed him by his clothes and lifted his body up, Lestrade daring not to interrupt him and slightly amused. Sherlock punched his face, with an anger he did not realize he was capable of, knocking a tooth out and lifting his fat body off the ground. The two tossed his body inside the van and got in with it, shutting the door behind and driving off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck, that was hard! Doing all the timelines and time stamps. Please give kudos, comments, etc! That makes my day, ya'll won't believe it. Merry Christmas in case I can't put a chapter out by then! I'll try.


	13. With A Little Help From My Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly and Ana get to know each other better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Happy Sherlockian New Years! I whipped up something quick to bless you all with for this special occasion since we're all still amped from that season premiere today and definetly out here looking for our Sherlock fix via these fanfictions. I know I am. The next chapter will be far longer, I promise, this is short because I only had a few minutes through out the day to put it together. Enjoy & review :] Happy new year, lovelies.

"Hold you in my arms,

I just wanted to hold,

You in my arms…"

The drive home was quiet. The air was polluted with questions and paranoia with a hint of Muse playing on a low volume on the car's small radio to make up for the silence. Ana, with her hands inside the coat's pockets, played with the phone she had picked up in the white van, not wanting to take it out. It didn't take Molly, who was now consciously analyzing every single detail about Ana, long to realize she was playing with something. The fat man had said the "first one," the first time he attacked her, was from Magnussen so he had to have been in contact with him at one point if not regularly. Could there be more voice recordings of her brother on the phone? Videos? Pictures? His whereabouts? Text exchanges between Magnussen and the man? With each possibility, the urge to pull the phone out became too potent to ignore but as soon as she had left the parking lot, prior to coming upon Molly's car, Ana had already tried to get in to the phone but it was password protected and locked the phone for a few minutes after a cluster of unsuccessful combinations to get in to the phone. The commitment to keeping her identity hidden from Molly, and the necessity to extract the data later from the phone to locate her brother, was the only thing standing in between the phone and the pavement below.

"Our hopes and expectations,

Black holes and revelations…"

Molly listened to the radio quietly, afraid to disturb Ana, who sat staring out of the window with her hands in her coat pocket; as if she was not aware of the viscosity of the blood dripping down her forehead. Molly kept looking in to the rear-view mirror to keep an eye on Ana, signs of fatigue or blood loss. The blood flew slowly, Molly was thankful for that. She did not attempt to ask Ana if she wanted to go to the hospital, almost sure of her answer beforehand. Instead, she'd take her to familiar surroundings - 221B Baker Street - and patch her up herself.

Molly questioned Sherlock's narrative of Ana coming across someone at the mall and simply abandoning Molly so Molly came back to the mall and circled it a few times in hopes of finding Ana. Luckily, she did come back. By now, Molly knew Ana wasn't just Sherlock's roommate. She had pieced that much together. Or rather, she was not just a roommate. If she was his roommate, then her backstory of having gone to university with Sherlock was not true.

"Far away,

This ship has taken me far away…"

Molly couldn't be mad at Sherlock for this lie, Ana might have asked it to be kept a secret. It wouldn't have been out of character for her to do so. Come to think of it, Molly knew nothing about Ana's real character, her real backstory. In the last few months, they had gone for dinner at Molly's insistence and met up numerous times so this realization came as a disappointment. Molly herself lacked female friends and she was making an active effort to be more approachable. She wanted a friend in Ana, but Ana was apathetic to her approaches and distant. Just as distant as she was tonight.

"Far away from the memories,

Of the people who care if I live or die…"

She cleared her throat to speak, to ask Ana if she was alright although it was far too late in to the ride to ask that but when she looked up in to the rear view mirror again, she found Ana crying, silently, while looking out of the window. Her tears intertwined, no, danced, with the blood that trickled down the right side of her face and on to her coat. Eventually, she stopped crying and the blood replaced the trail of tears. Molly drove the car, tentatively, for the roads were slippery with fresh snow. Thankfully, Baker Street was not that long of a drive. It had been twenty minutes since she had picked Ana up from the mall and not a word was exchanged. Molly parked down the street. Just before she got out of the car, her phone lit up with Greg's name. Confused, she picked up. He asked about Ana and whether she was with her or not and Molly looked back at Ana, nodding. How strange, she thought, that Sherlock had called Greg to help in his search for Ana. It would be amusing to see Sherlock try to lie his way out of this one. Then she realized she was on the phone and he could not see her nod, obviously, see her so she gave a verbal confirmation and told him they were outside Sherlock's flat. Ana wanted to ask for the phone, to tell Sherlock about what had happened but if the call was to confirm if Ana was with Molly then Sherlock had already known what had happened.

Molly parked the car strategically in between two other cars due to the lack of space on Baker Street. She made it a habit to only take the bus when she was in this part of London, herself living in a flat with ample underground parking for its' residents; a luxury that not many (of the continuously growing number of residents) in central London were granted.

Molly got out first, quickly walking over to Ana's side of the car and pulling the door open for her. She offered Ana her hand, who said thank you but refused, walking out of the car in a hurry and running up the stairs. Molly followed in an equal rush to escape the cold and snow, and her own paranoia. Before locking the door, Molly looked around outside instinctively to ensure nobody was watching or following them. A shiver ran down her spine as she came up the stairs.

Ana sat on the sofa adjacent to the kitchen with her boots and coat still on. The phone was nestled in her coat pocket and she waited for Sherlock to come back, and for Molly to take her leave. It wasn't meant to be malicious. It wasn't meant to be mean. All Ana could think about was her brother, and the man who had promised to help her find him. Anger boiled inside of her with each passing minute, mostly directed at Sherlock and his misplaced heroism. She would watch him, day in and day out, run off to solve cases. He did them sitting in the living room as she put her ear to the floor of her bedroom to listen to the conversations he had with many of his other clients. He solved cases more complicated, more horrendous than hers, admittedly, in a matter of seconds. How was it that he could not help her with the very dedication he would for others? She felt cheated even though he was not asking her to help him pay the rent or via other financial means. She felt exploited in a way that wasn't sexual in nature nor was it financial She felt exploited of her hopes, her feelings. Thoughts of him burrowing his way in to her life, him insinuating he sought a relationship with her beyond what they had established would be a strictly clientele basis bloomed with disgusted in her head.

"You're not just a client of his, are you..."

It wasn't a question. It wasn't a demand. It was an overdue observation.

Molly's soft voice pierced through the vile thoughts that littered Ana's mind. Perhaps for the first time today, Ana looked to Molly as someone she could unearth her deepest secrets to. Molly took notice, and smiled coyly as she ransacked Sherlock's kitchen and bathroom. He hadn't a first aid kit anywhere in the house but Molly found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and balled cotton swabs in the bathroom.

She walked over to Ana, pulling a chair in front of her. She reached out her hands, not bothering to ask for permission to go ahead. She wouldn't be swayed when it came to this. She pushed stray strands of her sweaty, blood covered hair out of the way of the wound.

"This'll hurt," she said, dipping the cotton swabs in the rubbing alcohol and bringing it to Ana's head. Ana didn't wince. A pain that she had become acquainted with on too many occasions. Molly was surprised by her devout restraint.

"You remind me of him, you know," Molly was now whispering. Being this close to someone made you conscious about your volume, how you breathe. The most menial of things.

"Who?" Ana looked to her curiously.

"Sherlock,"

Ana smiled. The smile was followed by a sarcastic roll of the eyes.

This disbelief on Ana's part indicated to Molly that Ana was not someone Sherlock had known long, confirming her suspicions. Anyone who knew Sherlock longer than the last four years knew he was another man before he met John Watson. Another species altogether. Anyone else would see the change in Sherlock and acknowledge it straight away. Except Ana.

"I'm serious," Molly smiled, carrying on, "…not Sherlock as you know him today. Not whatever variation of Sherlock he painted himself to be to you over the last few months you've known each other. Sherlock as I knew him a few years ago. How Mrs. Hudson and John knew him. He was resistant, almost allergic to relationships in any form. It was funny at times, but mostly…it was sad. Much like you. I see the same sadness and loneliness in you that I saw in Sherlock before John, both pretending to be outsiders in a world they want nothing more to be a part of. After John came along, he became a different person. I reckon I wouldn't even have the courage to ever come to his flat like this if he wasn't a different person. I reckon we both wouldn't be here if not for John. He used to be a closed book."

"Used to be? He is a closed book."

"You're one to speak!"

Sarcasm.

"I have my reasons for being a closed book."

"And so did Sherlock, but he evolved. We evolve...under the right conditions, the right pressures. I'm not asking you to change, but maybe not be so cynical of it."

Ana had a flashback to when Sherlock had said the very same thing, in different words when they had just met. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like Sherlock was speaking about himself than he was her. If what Molly was saying about Sherlock being anything like her was correct, then what Ana was thinking wasn't so far fetched. Maybe they were alike.

Ana was now at Molly's mercy for Molly held her face in her hand. Ana kept turning her face to look away from Molly for that would be too close to comfort for her and she would not know where to look. Molly got irritated, because she could not see the wound well enough in certain lights and she was not wearing her glasses to make out the little details.

"You need your own little John Watson to warm up your little Grinch heart,"

Ana didn't get the reference. She thought if she asked, it would make her seem uncultured and more un-relatable. Molly was trying, Ana saw it. She was thankful for it, even.

"I'll be your little John Watson," Molly smiled.

"Thank you…but alas, I already have my little John Watson," Ana felt a little guilty saying this, and she wasn't sure where the guilt came from. Was it from disappointing Molly's advances of friendship, or from her oversharing her personal life? But is that not what friends do? Ana hadn't had friends in so long, that she didn't even know what having friends would entail anymore.

"Oh? You have a boyfriend? Who's the lucky fellow?" Molly elbowed Ana playfully, happy she was opening up.

"No, no. It's nothing like that at all. He's my brother. Luka."

Molly had noticed her Danish accent for the first time as she said the word Luka. Her British accent often slipped, but when it did, it would go neutral instead of Danish.

"Now we're getting somewhere! How old is he?"

"He's 9. Do you have any siblings?"

"No, my father passed away after I was born and my mom never remarried,"

"Mine too. Well, not after I was born, but he passed away."

"I'm sorry to hear that," She genuinely was, but she was happy that Ana was able to confide in her about something as such. Molly rushed to grab another cotton swab to wipe away the excess rubbing alcohol off of Ana's wound before it fell in her eyes and caused her harm. She was enjoying this conversation. Ana was too. She had pulled her hands out of her coat now, and for once did not fiddle with the chair's splinters. Molly then joked about them at least having that in common with each other, if nothing else. Ana didn't laugh. Molly thought maybe the joke was in poor taste and didn't entice the reaction from Ana for that purpose. That wasn't the reason.

"I wouldn't want anyone to have anything in common with me, not at all," Ana stood up, stripping out of her coat. She didn't stop there. She unbuttoned her shirt as Molly watched, sinking in to the chair as Ana took the shirt off and turned around. Molly looked at her scars, resisting the urge to reach out and touch them. There were an abundance of scars, from all sorts of things. Molly could make out burn scars, whip marks, areas where entire skin tissue had been pealed off. Areas where Molly could visualize the torture she had gone through clear as day. The shiver returned to her once more, but worse. Molly, subconsciously, reached at her own back when she felt a phantom pain and tried to itch it away. She looked away, just as Ana put on the shirt once again. Before Molly could speak, Ana took the lead.

"Sherlock's been helping me heal them. He puts on an aloe solution when he can. Or at least, he used to,"

"Not such a closed book after all, is he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you live here, don't you? You see all of his clients come and go, when you're not working, that is. And have you ever seen him put on an aloe solution on all of his clients?"

She hadn't thought of it like that. She wasn't sure if it was a compliment, or what. She didn't know what to make of this, either. Ana did, at that very instant, contemplate telling Molly of Sherlock's requests to kiss her, but she did not feel that comfortable yet. She also remembered John mentioning Molly had a thing for Sherlock in the past and did not want to make her feel bad, not at all.

Molly tactfully changed the topic. "Luka, where's he right now?"

"I wouldn't be here if I knew,"

Ana sat down again on the chair, her shirt unbuttoned still as she sat open chested in front of Molly, a level of intimacy she had not shared with any other women but her nurses and the women in the cells next to her in Thailand who she would sometimes "room" with. Actually, she had shared that with someone else - where her own free will was concerned, at least. With Sherlock when he first came to her in the hospital and she was on many drugs. Another thing she had in common with Sherlock, maybe, the drugs. She would be lying if she said she did not enjoy being on them. She had never felt freer that when she was stood naked in front of him so many months ago.

"It's quite late, think you'll manage alright by the time Sherlock gets home? I'm sure you two will have lots to talk about."

Ana grabbed her dress as Molly started walking towards the coat hanger.

"No. I want you to stay."

Molly was brimming with happiness, but she didn't show that to Ana. Instead, in her own British way, she offered Ana tea and went off to find the tools to make it when Ana said yes.


	14. Son of Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some answers. And some more questions.

Lestrade parked the van in a private, empty parking lot nearby belonging to a well-established bank. They did not intend to park there long, believing all the information they required would have been had quickly due to the injuries the man had sustained paired with Sherlock’s method of interrogation. 

Time and time again, Sherlock questioned the man in his peculiar way. He intimidated him with his knowledge about him which normally worried his combatants, who would then themselves give up more information than Sherlock could extract with his verbal antics. That was his secret; by intimidating them enough to make them feel like he was already privy of their deepest, darkest secrets, they themselves would spill it for him and so he would resolve to pretending he already knew. Of course, some times he already knew. He internally had extracted the man’s origins, living conditions - poor - which explained his being Magnussen’s lap dog and terrorizing Ana, all for a paycheque. What he could not get out of him was the identity of the man in the second vehicle, the fiat, and where Ana’s brother was taken and what Magnussen wanted with him. He questioned the man for an hour and half about Ana’s brother, choosing not to resort to violence himself (more than he had in the parking lot).

But Sherlock grew angry with each passing second in that enclosed vehicle, fuelled further to the edge by a lack of nicotine in his system - despite the patches - and other substances. This wore away all of his patience, and his reservations for violence. With his wit replaced by his desperation to help Ana, violence proposed an easy pathway to extorting the unanswered answers.

The man did not yield whatsoever, laughing in between spitting out bouts of blood from the bleeding inside his cheeks from Sherlock punching him. They could not even get a name out of him. Lestrade had taken samples of his blood, although he was not a part of the forensics team the illegality of the situation called for a reprisal of other roles and he knew enough to obtain what he wanted and he knew enough individuals who would help him. Of course, the blood samples would produce results at a far slower pace so it was not always to be trusted. In some instances, blood samples would only help if the man was a citizen in the country and his DNA had previously been registered in the database which the man’s heavy Russian accent contradicted and Sherlock confirmed. He was an immigrant, an illegal one at that, being employed and funded by Magnussen in exchange for his services.

In any case, Ana had taken the man’s phone which would prove useful if everything they tried failed - which is what it looked like was happening.

It was Sherlock who lost his patience and felt intimidated by the man.

The Russian man was well equipped with knowledge about Ana’s abode, Sherlock’s career and previous cases he had worked. He was also knowledgable in private matters pertaining to Holmes, regarding Redbeard and Mycroft which Sherlock was caught off guard by. No doubt Magnussen was responsible for his education. He mocked Sherlock’s drug addiction to which the great detective, even in his pained state, sarcastically disregarded but it was when the man mentioned John and Mary that Sherlock panicked, feeling as if the man’s mocking was foreshadowing physical harm upon his best friend and his wife. It was at this moment that Sherlock allowed his instincts to dictate his actions, leaning forward and punching the man in his gut. Lestrade yelled, hoping to verbally deter Sherlock away from the man and reminding him of the precarious nature of this meeting that he should not - and can not - act this impulsively.

The man curled up in to a ball, both of his hands placed around the gut as if that would instantaneously cease the stinging sensation he was feeling or stop the bleeding. If the man refused to talk, then he was useless, and if he was useless, Sherlock could have all the fun he wanted with him before Lestrade figured out what Sherlock was really trying to do - to prolong his physical suffering as long as possible.

Lestrade got up and walked to the driver’s seat, realizing what Sherlock had long since realized that the man was useless but he was torn as to what Sherlock’s next play was. He watched from the rear-view mirror, turning the ignition and starting the car.

“What now, Sherlock? Please, let’s just go back to your flat and sort this mess out in the morning,” Lestrade turned around, waiting for a response.

Sherlock considered Lestrade’s suggestion for a few seconds, only to be angered by him hitting another dead end and worrying about another opportunity like this never coming up again. He suddenly lunged at the man and grabbed him by the shoulders, pushing his body, with intentional force, on to the wet matted floor of the van. He climbed on top of the man’s (unnaturally large) upper stomach, placing his legs and feet to each side of the man’s shoulders. 

“Incapacitation of one's opponents within the martial arts relies heavily on being well acquainted with the anatomy, more specifically, one's pressure points,” Sherlock didn’t remove his left hand from the man’s shoulder blade, instead took his thumb to feel his way around the pounds of fat on the man’s body until he found the part of the body he was looking for and carried on.

“…there’s a part of the body nobody really knows exists, except martial artists and massage therapists, perhaps. Even then, they don’t take advantage of it’s true potential, it’s true intended purpose. This is because it's hidden away, under layers of fat - which, by the way, you have too much of so call me when you get a stroke, I look very much forward to that,” he smiled looking down at him as he spoke, “It's called the 'Perfect Spot No. 14' and it doesn't hurt when you rub it firmly but…” 

Sherlock at once stopped massaging his shoulder blades when he had located what he was looking for. He pressed on it slowly at first, watching the man’s facial expressions and using them to dictate the ferocity with which he should press. He was no longer doing is slowly, or gently, Sherlock’s finger was pressing on that one spot as if it meant to pierce through the layers of the skin and other bodily matter until it touched the wetness of the van itself. 

“…but if you press too hard, especially when the body is already under a fair amount of pain, it not only triggers a raw, burning sensation that, under the right circumstances like your internal bleeding and pressure on the heart from the pool of fat around it, can onset an early heart attack!”

The man’s face first went red, his hands trying to grab at the air, not knowing what else to do for Sherlock’s body overpowered his and his strained breathing and roaring headache made it difficult to verbally protest much. The blood pooled in his mouth, congealing inside. Lestrade looked on, first at the man and then back to Sherlock, hoping he would know what to do as to stop it. When he saw Sherlock sitting on top of the man’s struggling body, smiling down on him and not helping, a sudden chill ran down his spine. Surely Sherlock would not go this far.

And he didn’t.

He pressed on the same spot again, in a counter-clockwise motion as opposed to the clockwise one he did initially to on-set it. The man’s heart rate decreased and the blood stopped congealing as he spat it all out, incapable of speaking.

“Luckily for you, it’s easily reversible if one knows what one is doing,” Sherlock looked up at Lestrade and motioned for him to sit back down. 

“Unlucky for you, I can induce it a hundred times more only to stop it whenever I want. I can kill you a hundred times without killing you at all,” 

The man looked up at Sherlock in sheer terror, realizing this would be the longest night of his life if he didn’t give up the information he had. Sherlock, too, knew it would be a long night but did not care. He grabbed the collar of the man’s track suit, pulling his heavy body off the van with exemplary ease and levelled his bleeding face to his own. Sherlock took his fingers and dug them in the man’s mouth, emptying the pool of blood from his mouth in order to make it easier for the man to speak.

“What does Magnussen want with the little boy? What’s he doing to him?”

The man looked around for other options prior to answering but was greeted with none.

“Nothing bad! Nothing you’ve probably thought he did. He had a son, you know, well, he would’ve. He died along with his wife in childbirth,”

“You’re telling me he kidnapped a boy to fulfil the long lost fantasy of having children? Not to normalize or encourage kidnappers, but why her brother? Why not any other boy? Or be like a normal human being and adopt one from the orphanage?” Lestrade asked.

“I’m not him, I just work for him!” He spat out more blood as he struggled to speak.

“He’s a trophy,” Sherlock had realized. “Serial killers, they collect trophies. Ivan Milat, renowned serial killers, stole his victim's sleeping bags from campsites he'd kill them in. Dahmer cherished genitalia of his conquests, Jerome Brudos - his victim's breasts. Magnussen, while not a serial killer, functions on the same wavelength, if the rumours about him which I hear are true, so it’s only natural he sees the destruction of a business venture that threatened his own - Ana’s father’s newspaper - as his own personal conquest.”

“If that’s the case, why, again, only her brother? Are you saying there’s more trophies?”

“It’s not just her brother, and it’s not just Magnussen…” 

Sherlock and Lestrade looked to the man again, who was not only in physical agony but also seemed very emotionally distressed and saddened.

“Magnussen’s unborn son, he was diagnosed with autism while still in his mama’s belly. Some of us think his interest in this boy is what made him single him out from the herd,”

“The herd?”

“There’s an…an underground network. Powerful men behind it. All sorts of things, from tax evading to terrorist organizations, to…”

Sherlock dropped the man, “…human trafficking.”

“Yes.”

“Sherlock, when you were gone for two years, John mentioned something about you trying to dismantle Moriarty’s underground network - could this be one of the same?” Lestrade was piecing the puzzle together with a discipline that Sherlock admired in John and thought to be unparalleled. He made a mental note to have Lestrade accompany him more so. He also noticed the Russian man’s eyes light up in recognizance at the mention of Moriarty. Had he blinked, he would have missed that look of recognizance but he hadn’t.

“It can’t possibly be the same. I spent months, years, hounding after Moriarty’s affiliates, stocks he’d invested in, people he came in to contact with. How could I have overlooked Magnussen? How could I have overlooked it? You mentioned Redbeard…how do you know about Redbeard? Tell me!” He shook the man once more.  
“Moriarty…M-M-Mr. Moriarty and Magnussen often meet, I was his bodyguard! Your brother, he was feeding Moriarty information and Redbeard was mentioned during one of their meetings while I watched the door!”

…often meet…not met, not “did meet”, but often met, implying the meetings were still happening…

The use of the present tense as opposed to the rightful past tense flew over Lestrade’s head but not Sherlock’s, who shook the man with so much force that head trauma was imminent. 

“Is Moriarty alive!?” 

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he tried to push Sherlock away, until finally, Lestrade intervened and physically pulled Sherlock off of the man. Sherlock, while being pulled out of the car, looked distraught and torn.

“He can’t be alive. He can’t,” Lestrade tried to reassure Sherlock, who, much to lestrade’s surprise, laughed.

“I wanted him to be alive, Greg. At one point, I wanted Moriarty to be alive,” the clever detective admitted. “You think I travelled across the world to dismantle his network for the betterment of society? To benefit a government that’s as corrupt, if not more, than Moriarty himself? No. No…I did so I could believe he was smart enough to elude his death, to outsmart me so that the game would, once more, be afoot and we could go on our merry way playing a game of cat and mouse for the rest of our lives so I wouldn't be bored. For a moment, I wanted him to be alive, this terrible person, only because I don't know how to cope with my boredom. Hence my visible disdain at myself just now at the realization that I could be so selfish as to wish for a man as malevolent as Moriarty to be alive for such selfish reasons when he’s responsible for funding the deaths of how many? How many, Greg?” Sherlock could not muster up to courage to look at Lestrade’s eyes after confessing this. He continued to divulge his recent realizations regardless. “What about the funding of trafficking - of my fellow humans, whom, yes, I do not sometimes understand but never have I seen them as lesser equals. What about his colluding with men like Magnussen, who destroy families and tear apart psyches of women, crippling them with anxieties and causations of distrust? I wanted a man like Moriarty, a man who stands for all the aforementioned, alive. What does that say about the man I am?”

The Russian man groaned inside, as the two men outside were lost in considering the philosophical conundrum that had arisen. Alas, followed by a long silence, Lestrade spoke just as the snow stopped falling.

“It says you’re only human, Sherlock. We all get bored."

He nodded, still incapable of looking at Lestrade.

"I think it's time you went home, Molly and Ana will be waiting for you. I'll take care of this mess."


	15. Autonomous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Start of Molly/Ana, anyone? Jk!

Sherlock didn't at once go to his flat. He needed to make a stop at someone else's flat first.

The living room in 221B Baker Street sometimes got cold more quicker than the rest of the flat as a draft often came through the dark entrance of the chimney which, unless cemented, could not be prevented. Molly had never stayed a single night at Sherlock's flat and as a result, was unfamiliar - amongst being curious - with anything other than his living room and the kitchen, which was in between the living room and the hallway that presumably led to Sherlock's bedroom - and she was right, it did lead to his bedroom.

The second bedroom, the one Ana was currently staying in which previously belonged to John, was on the most upper floor. At some time around 11:30 P.M., Molly declared that the night had been long and full of excitement that tired her. Ana, taking Molly by the hand after her asking where Ana's bedroom was, walked out of the living room and up the stairs to it. For a brief moment in time, Ana was transported back to her old home when she was a little girl, taking her friends by the hand eagerly to show them her bedroom she had spent all day cleaning up to ensure it was presentable for her friends when they came for sleepovers. Molly was similar in body type to Ana, her wrists frail and the weight of her body as Ana pulled it - nil. In Ana's haste, she failed to notice that Molly had grabbed a bag off of the ground. In fact, Ana didn't even notice her bringing it inside when they came in to the flat in the first place.

The staircase was narrow, as London homes normally were. After all these months, Ana still was not used to this fact having lived all her life in a vast, six bedroom estate. Her bedroom as a child was the entire size of their living room and kitchen combined. She was short and a small person herself, made bigger by the small walls of the home. When they got to the room, Molly looked around briefly before dropping the bag that only just caught Ana's attention due to the loud thud it made. She then fell to the bed freely.

"So this is John's bedroom!"

"Yes," Ana nodded, standing by the dresser in front of the bed and pulling off her clothes to get changed for bed.

Molly layed down on the bed, balancing her body with her two elbows as they dug in to the mattress, looked around curiously.

"We used to make so many jokes about this room especially at work,"

"Why's that?" The pants came off with ease as Ana sat down on the edge of the bed. She had a vague idea as to why, it was something she had noted herself when Mrs. Hudson was around but never truly understood.

"We thought Sherlock and John were…well, you know!" Molly had really gotten comfortable with Ana now, instead of just saying that there was talk of the two being homosexual, she blushed and reached her foot out to Ana's - now covered - back and kicked playfully, pulling away instantly realizing she might have hit an open wound and apologizing right away. She hadn't, thankfully, and if she had, she couldn't have done anything more painful than what Ana did to herself in her sleep.

"Gay?" Ana asked pretending to be surprised as she leaned over the bed and opened one of the drawers. She further lifted up a black divider and set it aside. The divider was meant to be an optical illusion of sorts, to show that the drawer was empty. Some of Ana's clothes rested under the divider. She trudged through them, listening attentively but careful as not to seem too curious.

"Yes, yes,"

"And is he?"

"Does it matter?" Molly asked back. "Sherlock's Sherlock, straight or gay."

"But…have you ever seen him with women? Is he interested in them?"

"If he is, he does a good job at hiding them! I heard there was one, but he doesn't speak about her at all."

Ana's ears perked up, "Who was that?"

Ana had found what she was looking for in the drawers - a pair of grey sweatpants - long ago but wanted to look disinterested anyways. Although, she needed to work on her subtlety as Molly could smell her intentions practically but she played along anyways.

"Just some woman I've only ever heard talks about in passing or jokes as John often does. Irene, I think, her name was! Yes, yes. Irene."

"Pretty name,"

"You think so? I've always like the name Ana more. Ah-nuh."

It caught Ana off guard how Molly perfectly pronounced Ana. Molly had said her names many times before, but this was different. She enunciated it properly, how Ana's name was enunciated at home. Home, which was lost like her name in this country. Nobody had pronounced it properly after she had been taken from her country. Not even Sherlock. Still, it was not his or anyone else's faults. She never corrected them. She even, unknowingly, adopted the foreign pronunciation to make it easier for others. That was her own fault. The beauty of names got lost in translation, much like poetry often did. In her country of birth, Ana was not pronounced like the westerners pronounced "Anna." Her name had more depth to it. Ah-Nuh. Like "say ahhhh…" Ah-Nuhh. Ana repeated her name in her head, comparing it to that of Irene's. Where was Irene from? Did her name have a special pronunciation like Ana's? Did Sherlock pronounce Irene's name properly?

Ana lay down in bed next to Molly after putting on the pants and the two drifted off to sleep instantaneously, huddled close together under the heavy, burgundy duvet that was contrasted by the gold, damask wallpaper on all four walls of the room. It was the most peaceful sleep Ana had in the last two years.

When Ana woke, she found herself alone in the early hours of that Monday morning. Or night. She couldn't tell what time it was because the sun came out late in the mornings these days, if it was generous enough to come out at all. Glancing over to the clock, it was only 6:56 A.M. Her newest friend did leave her note out of courtesy on the dresser top, where she also left tea for her. It was still quite warm meaning it had been made recently. In the note next to the tea, Molly declared that she had work and had to leave early to get changed for it. Ana looked to the side of the dresser and the bag Molly left for her, also indicated in the note, was there. She also left her personal phone number in the note, one which not even Sherlock had as the one they often used to get in touch with Molly was issued by her workplace and reserved for work related matters, although Sherlock and Ana rarely used it pertaining to work. Still, it seemed like Ana had made stride in their relationship. What else would you call sharing a bed?

Ana, who did not have work for once today, did not change out of the pyjamas despite going through the bag Molly left for her and finding many new, nice pair of clothes in it. A feeling that can only be described as pity ran through Ana. Not for Molly but for herself. She now considered Molly a friend, an equal, so Ana found it insulting that Molly have done this to her - as if she needed her pity. This was Ana's prideful Danish ego talking, of course, which disappeared quickly as she reminded herself that Molly didn't do it to be petty or malicious, but to be kind. She would return these clothes and explain to Molly she did not need them when she saw her next. She left the clothes there by the dresser and went downstairs, expecting to find the flat empty at this hour as Sherlock would either be at work or in his bedroom and the note made no mention of Sherlock.

She was wrong.

On the sofa in the living room, Sherlock sat. Or slept. He had gotten home just as Molly had left, the two exchanged a look of encouraging each other's tiresome state and promising to speak about this later. When he came upstairs, with a bag in hand, he contemplated a quick session of shooting himself but fell asleep on the sofa instead. His head was thrown back, the sleeve of his dress shirt rolled up and a side table by the sofa pulled in front of him fancied with a needle and a plastic bag next to it.

Assuming the worst, Ana turned to leave the living room but as she turned, the floorboard creaked and Sherlock sat up straight, woken suddenly by her presence and called her name.

"Ana, wait!"

Ana peered through the door, unaware as to whether she should come closer. Not because she was afraid but because perhaps Sherlock did not want to be seen this way by her.

"I'm not — I mean, I was going to, but I haven't." He picked up the needle and threw it inside the plastic bag, chucking the latter behind the sofa he sat on although it came rolling from under the sofa to where his feet were. Annoyed, he kicked it back under the sofa.

She smiled, hesitantly, and came through the door and sat in front of him. The union Jack cushion, she fancied strategically in her lap which Sherlock made a face at, assuming that her placing the cushion in her lap was a means to create a figurative space between the two as if she needed something to protect her if he, for whatever reason she even entertained the thought of, attacked her. The face he made disintegrated when he realized he wasn't the most predictable roommate, and a vast majority of their last few interactions consisted of him consisted of her hiding in her bedroom while he was busy tossing the furniture in his flat around while walking around with a gun in his hand.

"Does it disgust you?"

"Does what disgust me, Mr. Holmes?"

"You know what I mean." He fixed his sleeves, two nicotine patches decorated his gloriously veined arms; veins that protruded hungrily, begging for the needle they fiendishly longed for. "You're back to calling me Mr. Holmes now?" Was it another tactic to distance herself from him? He rolled his eyes.

"You didn't pick up yesterday."

"I know," he bit the inside of his lip, ashamed, unable to meet her eyes nor the bruise on her temple. "I'm sorry."

"I saw my brother,"

"As did I. He's the splitting image of you, Ana."

"I can't stay here anymore knowing he's so close by and you're not doing anything to get him back."

"What do you want me to do, Ana? Put myself in to the jaws of the biped shark that is Magnessun, camp out in a tree for days on end with a silly little American manufactured gun and shoot the man?"

It hurt Ana. She'd almost rather live in silence along him than to live with who Sherlock became when he was deprived of his drugs. At least she had tried something that day to get her brother back, which was more than what Sherlock was doing. How dare he throw that in her face? If he wasn't providing her with a roof, with food, she would have protested this. Reconsidering that thought once more, she grew bitter towards her own self for thinking she needed his support now that she had saved up so much money. Further reconsidering that second thought, it was Sherlock who got her the job in the first place. Even if she left the job, left London, she would be in his debt in some form or another from looking after her all these months. Damn it all, she was so confused. Her mind was racing, and she needed to be away from here so she got up, turning to leave once more. Sherlock called her back, followed by a sigh as he sat upright.

She stood by the door, not turning to face him. He himself got up after an uncomfortable few seconds of silence between the two and apologized, standing behind her - at a careful distance. He had made her upset, he knew that much. It wasn't him intentions. He apologized once more, asking her to please look at him - to speak to him. Was it guilt in his voice that Ana could sniff out, or was it that he missed her? She turned to him, her right arm by her right side and her left hand twisted behind her back holding on to the elbow of the right arm. She did not look up at him, but could see from how his feet kept moving around that he was anxious.

"Say I get your brother back, Ana. A duel, a battle for your brother. Fantasize that sight for a moment, I leave to you however you want that duel to go down and the means required to get him back. I implore you, just imagine that happiness you felt yesterday multiplied by a million. What afterwards? Your citizenship status changes from fugitive to resident? Your brother, unfortunately also a fugitive, what about him? Does he live with me, with you, here, illegally? Never being allowed an education, unless we conspire against the entire ideology of the education system and push a name on him, a name like your Rose Tyler. A child, being forced to assert a fake identity. Killing Magnussen, getting your brother back, will it change the past? Rewrite history, render you innocent in the eyes of the public?"

"No. No, it doesn't. But at least I'll have my brother and he'll be with me; safe."

"You call living the life as a fugitive safe? Running around, working under false names for the rest of your life, that's safety?"

"You've been blessed. You're privileged. The hardships you've faced can not be compared to others. You don't understand, Sherlock," Ana was now looking straight at Sherlock, her fists sweaty and clenched, "I've seen your relationship with your brother. You just don't understand."

"Just because our affection is paraded differently than others does not mean that it is not present, Ana," Sherlock moved closer to Ana, only by an inch if not lesser. "I'm...terribly ashamed although completely understand why it is that you think I do not understand. I only wish I could show you that I do."

Sherlock's proposition, implication, went over Ana's head. She was angry and she was frustrated.

"You say your brother works for the government, John also freely jokes about it. Can he not help me? I'll beg him if I have to. If you won't, will he?"

"He's said he wants nothing to do with Magnussen. He also wants me to do nothing about Magnussen and have no association with anyone or anything to do with him...And you."

"To have all this power and do nothing to help people with it..."

"I'm trying, Ana."

"When are you trying, Sherlock? In between your silly fighting with the furniture?" She grabbed his arm, the one that was out when she entered the room, and lifted up his sleeves. He tried to pull his hands away, but failed. Ana was not a strong person, physically, but looks are often deceiving. She held on to his arm with unworldly strength as she maneuvered his arm around, exposing the skin and the nicotine patches to the sides of his arms. She pointed to the needle marks, old ones that were healing or scarring. "In between your silly relationship with the needle?"

As soon as that came out of her mouth, she felt guilty. She wished she could take it back. When had he pointed to her body and ridiculed her? Blamed her for the hideous marring on it? She wasn't even angry at him for that, necessarily. She made peace with his habits the day she found out. All things considered, he was not a bad person. Just a complicated person, who at this moment, should be mad at her. But he wasn't. He had heard this all before, and he was waiting for Ana to remind him, too.

"Oh, I do not need this from you, too!" He pulled his hand away from her grip, her nails digging in to his skin and leaving long, thin nail scratches on him. It wasn't intentional, she pulled her hand off of his body as soon as she realized what had happened. She was angry, these thoughts - not the ones about his habits, but the ones about him doing nothing regarding her case - had littered her mind for weeks, and it felt good to speak her mind. The realization that she had harmed him, physically, did not feel as good as the former.

He pretended it did not hurt and looked away in equal frustration; his hands altercating between being on his hips to his face.

"I haven't done it, Ana. Not of late."

He wasn't lying. The needle marks on his arms were not fresh, they were mostly old. There were men who came to "visit her" when in Thailand, with bleeding arms and noses from drugs and other coping mechanisms like Sherlock's that she had learned to identify. Those were the violent ones but Sherlock was not one of them.

"When you do, how does it feel?" She walked to the kitchen and tried to reach for the aloe solution above the fridge. Failing and making the floorboards creak as she did so, Sherlock looked to her and took that as his cue to help her. He got the solution and handed it to her, assuming it was for her but she took his arm in her hand, the solution in the other, and she jumped to sit on the counter top. She pulled the dress shirt's hem up to his sleeves, surprised by how deep and far she had scratched him. Sherlock, instead, was fixated on her. She landed perfectly on it, not a single hair out of place - he noticed. He followed her every movement, the sun rising and greeting the bridge of her nose. The sun also highlighted her fresh wound on her head, one which Molly took care of last night for which Sherlock was thankful. He made a note to thank her for it personally later on today.

She unscrewed the tub and dipped a single finger in the nearly empty tub, and proceeded to rub it on his arm. Her movements were apologetic, so were her eyes. Sherlock was going to tell her that the solution was primarily for burn victims and tissue scarring and would do little to fix her scratches but thought it best not to ruin the moment. She had put the solution on, but continued to massage her arm. Neither had anything else to do today.

Sherlock looked down at her as she did this, the height difference between the two more noticeable than ever even though she was sitting on a counter top right in front of him.

"It feels…intimate," he answered, "…it's what I imagine having an other half is like. 7% of an other half, never more than a 7% solution. Without it, I can not function. With it, I fly. My deductions, my senses, everything is heightened. In a most predictable world, it offers unpredictability. Sometimes, I'll sleep for hours, maybe days and want to do nothing, my brain slowed. Other times, I'll solve 50 cases in a day if I'm bored enough."

"Was Irene also a case?" It wasn't intended to come out bitter, but it did. Anyone other than Sherlock Holmes would have understood the jealous twang with which Ana said it.

"I don't understand. Irene?"

He truly didn't, not at first. Then the woman came to his mind. He often referred to Irene Adler as the Woman - and nothing else. He had learned not to. How did Ana come to know of her? I suppose it was silly asking, Sherlock wasn't the only person in Ana's life much to his astonishment that Ana was beginning to open up to people more as indicated by Molly's presence over the course of the last day. It had been a rather long and eventful day, full of surprises.

Ana didn't let him answer her own question, trying to change the topic realizing how silly she had sounded.

"Do it with me."

She wrapped her legs around the back of his torso; not sexually, more playfully. He did not know how to react but he seemed to be getting more closer to her body unintentionally. Her warm breath as she spoke could be felt on his chest. Not knowing where to look, he stared at the backsplash of the kitchen as she stared up at him.

"Heroine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"No." His voice was more firm, more assertive than normal.

"Why not?"

 _Because you're hoping heroine will replace the memories, the void in you created by being away from your brother, losing your family and being forced in to what you were. Because those that turn to heroine, or any other drugs, for the sole purpose to filling voids of that destitute nature are the ones who end up falling in to the void themselves and almost never get out. Because you're not me, Ana,_ he wanted to say but thought it best not to.

"I said no."

"I was kidding!"

Though she quickly changed her tone to one that was more playful, he noticed she did not smile. Most often would if they indeed were joking. Her pupils dilated, and her heartbeat fastened like everyone else's when they were caught lying or their anxiety was rising in the event of being caught in the lie.

"I don't want to be a victim anymore. I want my autonomy back."

"Drugs aren't the answer."

 _They were for you,_ she answered back in the privacy of her own head.

"Your brother, he was wearing a school uniform yesterday," Before she could ask how he knew, she remembered Molly telling her that Sherlock had called his police-friend and was looking at CCTV footage of the mall. He had seen everything that happened yesterday then. Instinctively, as if to confirm what happened yesterday was real, Ana touched the bruise on her forehead and winced. Sherlock thought it had hurt so he pulled his body away from her, afraid he was the reason for the hurt. Her legs unwrapped from behind him so not to trap him and she allowed him to pull away, now bouncing her legs back and forth as he stood in front of her leaning on the kitchen table.

"There were bruises on his hands, he mentioned a headmistress," Ana told Sherlock, recollecting the events of yesterday.

"The man who attacked you twice, he's sitting in a jail cell right now. He also said Magnessun was not harming the boy, if that provides you comfort in any way. I know how much he means to you. I know how much you want to be with him. Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, but he's taken care of - economically and emotionally - with Magnessun. Magnessun, on some level, cares for the boy. Does it warrant him kidnapping him? No, but until we can get around your status as refugees, to out Magnessun as the corporate predator he is and clear your name, your brother is in better hands. Better hands than you were, I promise you that."

Sherlock tried to lessen her anxieties.

"I mention the uniform because I recognized the badge, Ana. While we can not bypass Magnessun, nor is it the right time to, I can file a claim of abuse at the school and try my best to get the headmistress who beat your brother dismissed. I can do that."

It was a brief relief. Ana jumped off the counter and opened her arms for Sherlock. At first, he hadn't the faintest as to what to do. He had already reached in to his pocket for his phone to check his e-mails, to plan the day, but slid it back inside his pant pocket when he saw her gesture. He instead walked over to her and hugged her back. She wrapped her arms around his waist tightly, and he could feel his shirt get wet from something foreign. When he looked down, he could see her head bobbing up and down, trying to cry as quietly as she could and not alert him. He, in turn, wrapped his arms around her and allowed for her to cry to him, petting the back of her head and placing his chin on the top of her head like he'd seen in a movie once. It seemed to soothe her and her crying stopped. There was a smile on her face despite the tears. They were not tears of despair but ones of hope, something she had not felt in a long time.

His stomach rumbled, followed by a sharp pain that knocked him back unexpectedly. It was a jerk that even Ana felt, the vibration from his body into her own. It was a jerk she recognized. His mind was fighting his body, and he had not had a hit in a long time. He refused to break their bodies apart but tore one hand away to hold himself up using the kitchen counter. The pain got worse and needed the use of both of his hands, so there Ana stood, in between Sherlock's aching body that was eating at itself from the inside and the counter behind her, afraid to make any sudden movements. He broke out in to sweats and thrust his head in to her shoulders for support and she welcomed him open heartedly, urging him to stay there as long as he needed. She rubbed his back in similar fashion to how she would the backs of the girls in Thailand who were forced to shoot heroine for the pleasures of men, something which Ana managed to escape.

Occasionally, Sherlock trembled and shook. Ana felt every movement, her own body pressed to his so intimately. If drugs were intimate to him, what would he consider this, thought Ana. The cramps and stomach pains came and went as Ana stood attentively underneath his body, ready to help if he needed anything.

Out of nowhere, she was balancing herself on her toes and pressing her lips underneath his chin. At first, her lips only pressed against his chin. When she grew more confident and allowed her body to take control as opposed to her spinning mind, she pursed her lips together and started to plant kisses all over his neck and jaw. He didn't know what to do with himself so he stood there, allowing her to continue. A mere minute of this felt like forever to them, taking away Sherlock's physical pain and silencing the calamities within Ana's mind. She jumped back on to the counter of the kitchen, her hands draping around his neck like garlands quickly pulling him closer to her. He stumbled at first but did not fall, managing instead to collect this steps and follow her lead. He was caught by her lips which guided him to safety to her. Another cramp ran through him, perhaps the worst one yet, but he did not feel anything. All he felt were her lips against his. All he wanted to feel was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still haven't seen the season finale - I refuse! I told myself I will not watch it until I complete this chapter and roll it out for you. I find, every time another season of Sherlock comes to an end, I postpone watching the finale each time. For season three, I did not watch it for one whole week because I did not want the series to end. Alas, here we are. What did you guys think of the finale? And what do you think of my story? Feel free to comment, and leave kudos if you like it. Not gonna lie...kinda disheartening getting so many views but very little commentary :( Oh well! I write for the soul, and continue to do so even if nobody reads :P Thank you & I hope you all enjoyed this very much. Next chapter shall be soon - assuming university hasn't killed me eeeeep!


	16. The River Flows In You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brevity is the soul of wit, just like how brevity is the soul of this chapter. Fear not, the next one will be longer!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter today, but I wanted to roll it out quicker than most of the chapters. I really love writing this, it's a shame I average 300 views per chapter and barely any reviews but alas, I must remember I write for myself first and foremost and it is always fun. To those of my loyal readers, I recommend you listen to this on loop as you read this, as I listened to it as I wrote it and incorporated it in to the chapter because it's not only a masterpiece but inspired this chapter to begin with: watch?v=hS-LQTcu2mw (All credit to Yiruma and Daniel Yang)

In 2001, Lee Ru-Ma released his first album under the stage name Yiruma. In 2001, Sherlock fell in love for the first time with the piano and since became obsessed with replicating piano compositions on his violin. A composition of Yiruma's that was appropriately titled The River Flows in You especially struck a chord in him. Today, on Christmas morning, Sherlock retrieved the violin from its stand as he peered out on to Baker street. He felt like playing The River Flows in You today, abandoning his traditional Bach and Vitali sheet music. He wanted to play it later on tonight at the dinner he had planned for family and friends. And curious Ana Vincent. Especially Ana.

Not a soul in sight as the snow continued to fall. It was 11 A.M. but looked like it was the P.M. The shoppes were all closed, cars parked one behind the other, their owners undoubtedly gracious to be at home with their loved ones.

His violin hadn't been touched in so long that the dust was beginning to double in layer. He blew it off of the strings and plucked at the strings, tuning it by turning the fine tuners and fiddling away from bottom up as was the order to tune a violin. His chin hit the pad of the Con Fuoco made chin rest that was delicately hoisted on the violin itself. Picking up the bow, he closed his eyes, revisiting Ana's lips in memory and what followed. Not even The Woman's advances, her vigorous requests to court him in a sense, towards him illicit the feelings that Ana's lips that morning.

_When she pulled her lips away from his mouth to breathe, she had intended to go back for more after she had collected her breath but Sherlock seemed to be some sort of deep sea creature who had an endless supply and didn't need to surface to catch his breath. Sherlock suddenly felt the pain in his abdomen and he tried to replace it with her kiss, leaning in himself after seeing she had stopped. Was it coincidental that the pain stopped upon her kisses? Or was it that he, so immersed in the euphoria of finally having her lips, simply redirected all of his nerves to his mouth, to savour the moment for as long as he could - undisrupted? She went back in for another kiss, hands digging in to his chest until her nails could be felt on his collar bones despite the thickness of the shirt. The first time, he had unknowingly closed his eyes as soon their lips met, after all, is that not what they also do in the movies? He got angry at his eyes for betraying him so treacherously and closing without his approval. He was not even able to look down at her face and see what she might have been feeling, if she enjoyed it, was it noticeable that he hadn't much experience? When she leaned in for the second time, he had intended to keep his eyes open this time._

_His arms wrapped around her waist, more softer and gentler than she had dug her nails in him. The ends of her long, near black hair greeted the skin on his arms and hands. The softness was unearthly. He leaned in closer, hoping for more but stopped himself. He took her wrist and lifted her hands, forcefully, from his chest and held it in front of him - careful as not to hold it too tight for her sake. His middle finger vibrated when his skin met her rapidly pulsing vein. He noticed her quivering lip, her heavy breathing and dry lips._

_"No."_

_Ana didn't like hearing him say no to her so much in one day._

_"Please. I want this."_

_"Don't make me say it again."_

_"Why not?"_

_He took her hand and placed it on his chest, not knowing what else to do with them._

_"You don't want this. Not right now, not really. I can smell the adrenaline on you. First your out of character request to do heroine with me, then this. I can only assume by your lax nature at my heroine addiction that you're all too familiar with it from perhaps women who you resided with in Thailand, which funnily enough should warrant you to worry for me but instead, you ask if you can do it with me. That's not you talking. That's the trauma, the adrenaline which trauma sometimes manifests in to. Your sudden increased strength further points to your adrenaline high, the way you grabbed my arm earlier and my chest just now," His lips were wet, the skin around them flush with excitement. Excitement from being this close to her, and feeling this much. The last time he took a woman's pulse and was greatly moved by it was with The Woman. He continued, "…and your breathing…your…increased, heavy breathing…and your heartbeat."_

_He looked at her pastel pink lips as he said it, smacking himself mentally for being so obvious as he objectified her lips like a pervert would. He looked up to her eyes instead._

_Her pupils got bigger, then smaller, then bigger again. He leaned in, planting a kiss on her forehead instead. She could feel the swelling on his lip from being stimulated as he did so. It was so…fatherly. So paternal. She was beginning to get embarrassed, until she realized he held his lips planted there for a good fifteen seconds, kissing it a second time before pulling himself off._

_Her hands were still on his chest for despite. She wasn't pushing him off of her. It was similar to how she placed the cushion in between her and him; a subconscious effort to create a distance. He was right. He often always was. She didn't know it until she heard it from him. There was no point in telling him because he was Sherlock Holmes, and as you know, he knows everything. Her hands struggled to tear themselves from the fabric. She resisted the urge to feel her way around his purple, satin dress shirt as she pulled away. The very one that he was wearing yesterday before Molly came to take her to the mall. The very one he was wearing when he beat the fat man up for laying a hand on her. There were very small drips of his blood on the cuffs of the shirt, and since she saw no external injuries on him, assumed the blood was not his immediately._

_With the recollection of yesterday's events onset by the spotting of the blood, she was visibly setback at what she had done. It didn't particularly feel bad. It didn't feel dirty. It just wasn't convenient at the moment to Ana, not under these circumstances. Her first priority was unequivocally her brother and her romantic interests could wait. It didn't stop her from thinking about it or growing to want it over the last few months, however._

_Sherlock saw her toiling and stepped away from her himself, pulling out his phone once more and going to his bedroom. He respected her and he refused to take advantage of her current state, especially not when something as important as physical intimacy was concerned. When she wanted it, truly wanted and would no longer be confused, he would be there._

_He threw his phone on the bed when he got to his bedroom and lay down on the bed. Just then, the phone vibrated and the screen lit up._

_"Text received -_

_The Woman: Saw you at the mall yesterday. Let's have dinner."_

_It was not a surprising message. They had always kept in touch. Her more so. The last message from her was a month ago, letting him know she would be in London briefly. He didn't ask when, he did not want to lead her on. He normally wouldn't reply to her texts at all, and now with whatever it was that he had started to feel towards Ana, he could not bring himself to reply to her now._

_The stomach pains persisted as he lay there but they were tolerable especially when, in his mind palace, he replaced the physical pain with the replay of the events that just transpired. Yiruma's The River Flows in You played melodically in his head, except instead of the original, he composed a violin sheet music for it in his head and played it. He fell asleep listening to that in his curly haired head. The cases can wait, the music was more important._

_They spoke nothing of the kiss the following days, although with her not working for the holidays and him also momentarily on a hiatus due to a lack of cases, they spent many days together. Ana was both traumatized by her one experience of going out in public and bound to Baker Street by her status as a fugitive, and Sherlock…well, he just enjoyed her company and found himself wanting to be around her to make up for the last few months of their estrangement._


End file.
